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Chronicle vs Grimoire of the Shadowlands, are people tripping up over what Retcon actually means?
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Chronicle was METZEN'S definitive lore book. The current lore team is Year Zeroing the lore by ripping up the previous work and replacing it with their own. The same as the WOTC team is currently ripping up nearly 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons lore and declaring it non-cannon. The same as Lucasfilm under Disney ripped up the Star Wars EU and declared it non-canon.
Make no mistake: this is ALL a Retcon. The current team just haven't finished it yet.
Retcons are just bad writing.
It does make the previous lore worse though and seem less meaningfull
This might be unpopular, but it’s reasons like this why I actually thought MoP had the best writing/Lore. It was all new stuff, sure you had some Titan/old god shit thrown in there, but in the grand scheme of things there was little to retcon. I imagine a Titan/Old god conflict could play out on any number of mysterious hidden continents all over Azeroth and it wouldn’t have strained my suspension of disbelief… Or at least, it wouldn’t have back then. Instead of going to WoD I kinda wish the game would have kept going with entirely new continents for entirely new ideas in the lore, while still keeping it “Azeroth” focused.
@2:10 Without major spoilers, Shadowbringers was that for FF14, in a very well received way. In ARR, 2.x content, things just weren't as concrete, so some things from 2.x will be at least lightly retconned going forward. In 3.x, by their own interviews I believe, that's when they'd decided upon how and what the broad roadmap would be for the story through Endwalker. And the shoe happened to drop in full during Shadowbringers such that some characters and events in 2.x are now a little bit "off" due to the retcon but overall the story is in a much more solid clear place for it.
I think it's very fair to say WOD and Legion did some pretty good retcons to clean up the lore mess.
But then they've kind of gone off the rails with trying to make every new threat be the threat behind or above EVERYTHING!
wow lore is a mess, mostly because they don't plan really where the story will go, it's more about what they want to do for make the game more appealing more than continuity…. it's like if they was simply deciding at the last second who will be the baddie and who will betray and after ahve do this, try to find a way to justify why and how… sylvanas is a perfect example of this. like with garrosh, remember what was garrosh in lich king and what he was right the next expansion? for me the lore of wow did end with lich king after this… a mess… it's when they have decide to change story based on what is most appealing.
How can we be sure that this "broker" perspective isnt just Nethrezim propaganda?
As someone who read All-Star Squadron 18 in 1983 when it was released https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity.
Also: The purpose is to have a reading order that includes stories published more than 15 months later than when they are set, but that make more sense to be read in their chronological, rather than in their published order. SuperMegaMonkey calls them "continuity implants," and I think that's a good term. – http://cmro.travis-starnes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=5254
A retcon is Sargeras corrupting the Eredar or Maiev Shadowsong not becoming a Serial Killer because she couldn't deal with Illidan's death in Wolfheart. Adding to lore because things were happening behind the scenes (Arthas was a minion of the Jailer) is a continuity implant but that can easily turn into a retcon.
I'll be honest, anyone who thinks the new book is a "retcon" doesn't actually know anything about the lore.
The book, the cosmology and everything is just a different point view and ADDS to Chronicles. Everything is just adding up to what we already know, because most of the "retcons" can be added in without actually changing anything but can be viewed as our knowledge and understanding of the matter being incresed.
Just like going into the theater and thinking that what you see in the stage is "reality" or everything there is to know, then you find out that behind stage there are a tons of things going on
I'd be lying if I said the concept of having several Lore books about the same subject but 'written by different perspectives' wasn't interesting.
BUT Their books are still a TERRIBLE way to convey their Universe, especially since they're always out of stock, so we have to go read online scans from people who got their versions.
It's also clearly both a cash-grab so they can sell one new big Chronicle-like Lore book every expansion to shove in the new stuff they thought about AND a way to justify their inability to think their Lore through ahead of time.
That's the annoying part.
You can turn it anyway you want, we still never heard of the First Ones before Shadowlands' Beta. That expansion introduces a truckload of new concepts. We still don't have any info on many existing things like the Void Lords, and they're already trying to add more stuff to fill-in later, as if they didn't had already enough to work with. If that is what the Warcraft Universe is to become, a Universe where they keep pulling new truckloads of Lore as shallow as a puddle out of their collective arses every expansion, yeah, imma head out.
I liked the mystery of the "Azerothian perspective" and find the Shadowlands explanation for things kinda boring which is tainting things I previously enjoyed. That's the issue I have with the new additions to the lore.
It's so jarring how seriously people take the WoW lore, when it's obvious that they're just making shit up as they go, for over a decade. Who cares? It's just throwaway context to go along with the new "seasonal" approach.
Looking at wow now, it's weird how each new expac is so disconnected from the previous one that they need a pre-patch to set up the new story. Compare to FFXIV where they have been telling the same story since the game began and each new expac is a natural growth out of the previous one.
Wow went from fantasy sci-fi they need to retcon the sci-fi out and return to fantasy
Good old Ievgenii' Alexandrov!
It has nothing to do with the video, but I'm extra chuffed that I could read their name from Ciryllic without the aid of a chart! Yay for quarantine learning, I guess xD
I've noticed that many people who play wow don't understand what an actual retcon actually is, and it's frustrated that it's thrown around so flippantly.
There have been retcons in World of Warcraft, but they're nowhere near as big or as frequent as people suggest.
I disagree, the Jailors entire lore is a retcontinuity, not a retcontextualization. Adding more context doesn't make the Burning Legion putting Ner'Zhul into this enchanted army that THEY CREATED into, "Oh it was actually the Jailor that made this in ages past because he planned for all of these events to happen for his eventual release and vengeance."
The Jailor's existence literally retcons the entire game to being his plan the entire time, and it taints all the lore that came before it because 'Well the Jailor planned for that to happen'
The Lich King was working for the Burning Legion in WC3, and had nothing to do with this 'jailor', Arthas was trying to prepare Azeroth for confrontation with the Burning Legion, not anything to do with this 'jailor'. He's a contrived element forced into the lore, made to consume all the lore to try and shoehorn him into being irrelevant in an attempt to make players care about him.
And I know this because of the attitude and philosophy that has consumed the company at this point. Surely you must see that there is a common connection in the language and attitude between Blizzard for the past few years, and Disney's Star Wars, which in itself decided to destroy everything that came before it. It's not on accident, it's intentional. They wanted to destroy WoW's lore, and so they did.
Imagine not putting actual lore and story in your game and still making a confusing mess out of it
I feel it’s pretty obvious reading The Chronicles that they are not written to be objectively true. We have an unreliable narrator, and that’s amazing. I DO NOT want an omniscient perspective, telling us exactly how the universe works, parsing through the perspectives is far better. That becomes so boring. That being said, they haven’t exactly done this well, I won’t champion the Sylvanas arc.
Looking forward to Pyromancers take on the lore… Oh wait…
Retcon, whatever one might call it. It was a slap to the face for any lore nerd. Chronicles being from the perspective of the titans just makes it easy for them to just say "yeah buuuuuut you didnt have context for this!" without any chance of us, the readers actually engaging with it … yeah, that feels cheap. If they advertised (and not just years later and like 2 books) as "in universe lore" – sure. Do that. Not that I have any expectations of you (blizzard) not fucking it up, but sure. Who is the jailer? Was he ever hinted at before shadowlands? No? Ok. It's basically the problem deathwing had. Without him being a fucking big ass dragon (not to mention deathwing "was" mentioned before in lore, and still many people kinda tuned out).
Anyways – yeah, whatever someone might call it. It sucks and the "context" just makes some other cool moments really dull and/or stupid.
Complaining about retcons? Laughs in X-Men…film and comics.
I thought for sure he was gonna say “when you do that really badly, you get the Disney Star Wars trilogy”
You can choose whatever word you want: Hard retcon, soft retcon, re-contextualize…Its all crap. It's the stupidest thing you can do imo. "Oh, this changes everything!!!", "we were missing this all along!"…lazy and silly…
Retcons are garbage, they should be used sparingly. It's a weird feeling, to invest time, money, interest in something and for the creators to decide one day "oh that's not canon, don't pay attention to it". I dunno, how can most people respect WoW's lore when Blizz doesn't even respect it?
They knew roughly about Sylvanas and the Jailer back in Legion. I hate them retconning or misleading with perspectives excuse. Call it what you will, but they are changing lore to make it fit their narrative.
I dont like the lore atm the moment myself, but i cant help but feel that so many ppl in the wow community should read a bit about "arguments from ignorance".. 🙂
Retconn means they planned poorly
Retroactive Continuity and re-contextualizing can overlap, but Blizzard is getting flack because they keep creating new lore that conflicts with the audience's understanding of existing lore. It can be done successfully, but you have to respect what has already been established. Blizzard does it in a way that says the lore we see doesn't matter because it's still subject to change.
Wow needs to be taken out the back paddock and put down, metzen and morheims work has been shat on for too long
Sigh. It's a retcon. Blizzard trying to make the new shit fit the old shit and it doesn't work. And you trying to say it isn't is not only wrong, but it's cherry picking wrong.
Have you not seen taliesins new video?
I wouldn't have bought the books if I knew it was just from a certain perspective and not the definitive information like they advertised. I feel cheated. As Matt said, this is a retcon from that perspective.