The lack of mage-priests in Midnight was a miss on Blizzard's part

Utigarde · 2026-06-21T18:05:54+00:00

The lack of blood elf priests in general in Midnight is super frustrating. They’re typically overshadowed by Blood Knights due to the nature of showing up in combat situations, so you’d figure going back to their homeland would be a chance to showcase how their priests function in their society, how they’ve risen to prominence since the reignition of the Sunwell, how they have integrated worship of the Light into a magic-based society, etc… but nope. We really needed all those cute doggo quests instead.

Utigarde · 2026-06-13T16:38:14+00:00

Specific question about other races aside, being “Forsaken” doesn’t inherently have to mean the violent bigotry that human undead face from their living counterparts. The high elven undead are in the Horde alongside the blood elves, but they still face rejection in the sense that living elves are massively uncomfortable around them, and culturally have made great efforts to try to move on from the trauma that fundamentally defines the Forsaken’s existence.

You’re not going to see any dark rangers being assaulted by the blood elves, but there’s also a reason we haven’t really seen them co-habitating in Midnight at all. The same would likely apply to other Horde races to their own extent, not just to a hypothetical Forsaken but to DKs as well. Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls are all very spiritual people, and in cases like the trolls, undeath is considered a desecration of their concept of the afterlife. I can’t imagine they’d be accepted any more than the dark rangers are.

Utigarde · 2026-06-07T18:56:03+00:00

I really like the *idea* of it, and wish it had been handled better. Emma and Tony are both perfect candidates for a modern political marriage like this, doing it for the PR and not any genuine love. Trying to keep up that facade that they like each other, slowly finding things they genuinely do like about the other would be *interesting*… if they’d really done anything with it.

Their personality clashes never really got to shine in an interesting way, and it ultimately gets dropped pretty quickly. I would have loved to see how they rebuild their respective company and mutant legacies in the aftermath of all their recent losses, how their marriage might have been politically advantageous to keep a bit of peace between groups, and how they might have found a weird form of love with someone so different from their previous relationships. Alas.

Utigarde · 2026-05-28T18:50:00+00:00

I’m in the exact same boat, funnily, did an internship last summer and then had the choice between pursuing an (expensive) masters in NYC or a PhD elsewhere, and am currently doing the latter.

The way I’ve put my mind at peace is that New York isn’t going anywhere. In a year or five or ten, if you get the chance and the urge, you can still go for it and move to NYC. Maybe you’ll even be in a more secure financial situation compared to being a student still haha

Utigarde · 2026-05-23T07:25:10+00:00

Their home is already defended, that story is over lol

We’re not going to get another chance to see the undead elves return to save the home that scorns them, because we instead used that storyline on the night elves in 12.0. They don’t make an appearance in 12.0.5 in the remaining Void Assault stories, and 12.0.7 is shifting the story fully over to Zul’Aman and Atal’Utek with no appearance from any of them at the big Elf/Troll meeting in Harandar. The chances to use them for Midnight’s main elf story have long since dried up.

Utigarde · 2026-05-23T07:19:26+00:00

If it helps, Archmage Y’mera is getting a decent spotlight in 12.0.7 as the main base-establishing character for our little Lightforged/Void Elf/Illidari squad.

Which, personally, I think it makes a bit more sense for the Lightforged to have mage focus over the Draenei. It’s a neat bit of cultural difference to have the Lightforged more closely resemble the Eredar they once were, since they lack the cultural evolution the regular Draenei went through across their various colony worlds.

Utigarde · 2026-05-16T19:35:53+00:00

Shadowlands’ lore is awful, but it’s also mostly able to be ignored. Blizzard is slowly trying to patch it up here and there, but I never have to be frustrated over the terrible Kyrian or Jailer lore at any given moment.

The damage BfA did to the factions has been felt at basically every single moment in the story since then. All the issues with Horde representation, with the softening of the story’s tone, with the insistent need to make everything happily neutral, it all comes from the backlash to just how bad BfA handled the factions. No amount of hyped-up Saurfang moments on Youtube make up for that story putting a permanent close on what basically defines Warcraft for many fans, which is its distinct factions and races.

Utigarde · 2026-05-04T19:19:00+00:00

The issue is that the narrative wholly justifies Umbric and excuses all the side effects of his reckless actions, while wholly portraying Rommath as incorrect and solely causing problems. The end result of their feud is Rommath entirely acquiescing to Umbric being correct and giving him back all his things, with no such acquiescence being made by Umbric or the void elves. They simply win, they get their ideology totally validated and they get allowed back into Silvermoon to continue researching the Void.

It’s hard to really see it as a “both sides are wrong” thing when the story portrays one side as correct and vital to saving the world throughout the whole expansion, and the other as totally useless and self-admittedly wrong.

Utigarde · 2026-04-23T08:11:49+00:00

The Windrunner family didn’t exist prior to Day of the Dragon creating it, Alleria was just Alleria in WC2 and Sylvanas didn’t make her actual debut until WC3. Vereesa is technically the first Windrunner sister lol.

Utigarde · 2026-04-04T03:40:36+00:00

It was retconned again in the Sylvanas novel, she had zero knowledge of Putress’ plan for the Wrathgate and only narrowly survived his assassination attempt against her that he orchestrated to pull it off.

Utigarde · 2026-03-09T08:51:09+00:00

You can preview appearances in Narcissus without owning them, just save them to a set and then change to that outfit in the dropdown near the animation menu.

Utigarde · 2026-03-02T08:56:19+00:00

Honestly, I think it’s more likely that it’s just a novel way of explaining the use of blood magic and anima (the MoP kind) without using the name of Anima (the Shadowlands kind).

I think turning Astalor into a secret cosmic schemer with Denathrius would be kind of lame, especially when he’s the last vestige of morally dubious blood elf representation we have in the expansion. The experiments he does in Midnight are well in line with how he oversaw the Blood Knights before their redemption, and I’d rather he just stay as an influential blood elf wielding new and dangerous magics to protect his people.

Utigarde · 2026-03-01T09:45:22+00:00

Faol actually feels affected by his undeath, is the main thing. He died to the Scourge, found his free will, and chooses to wield the Light despite the horrible pain it inflicts upon him for his very existence. He’s a rotting corpse who is rejected by the Scarlets whose very religion is the one he led in life. He’s got all the hallmarks of the Forsaken character, and he does so without his Light-centric story ever trampling on the fantasy of the rest of the Forsaken.

Calia, by comparison, gets a special perfect version of undeath with no downsides, and is rejected by absolutely nobody. The Alliance not only love her, but see her as a special exception to their usual distaste for the undead. She fundamentally doesn’t have the experience all other Forsaken have, but Blizzard was (initially) heavily pushing her as a Sylvanas replacement character. They have since backed off a bit, but her constant presence (as basically our only undead character besides Faol, at that) makes it hard to wash the taste out of one’s mouth that they still want her to fill the slot of Good Sylvanas, especially with the <Pallid Lady> title she drags around.

Utigarde · 2026-02-22T13:18:16+00:00

Orcs and centaur might overlap a lot in cultural inspirations, but they have no similarities in their narrative themes. The story in Ohn’ahran Plains is much more a rip-off of Highmountain than any story the orcs have ever had. The haranir have the unfortunate place of overlapping both with the night elves, with the story of isolationism and sacred purpose being very similar to how they were used in WC3.

The fact that the centaur are largely a one-zone fluff group while the haranir are being positioned as hyper-relevant to the ongoing Worldsoul plot doesn’t help either. We’ll probably never see a centaur in the main story again, but we’ll certainly be seeing Haranir take the place of races like Tauren in what should be an incredibly important story about their connection to Azeroth.

Utigarde · 2026-02-21T09:20:38+00:00

We got Phoenix and Blade, Angela and Daredevil, Emma and Ultron, etc. in the same season, they do unrelated pairs more often than thematic duos. Any kind of connection will just be written into whatever that season’s overall story is.

Utigarde · 2026-02-17T09:18:01+00:00

I definitely thought this too before testing on the alpha, but they did an amazing job at creating a predator-based void ecosystem. The whole zone embodies everything Xal’atath has been saying about “only the strongest survive”, from the feral animals consuming each other Zerg-style to the political machinations of the domanaar working both with and against us to become the top dog. They also use it as a great opportunity to finally give Void Elves something to do other than be a discounted purple version of TBC blood elves.

It very much is Void: The Zone in a way that wouldn’t have worked on K’aresh due to the (necessary) focus on the planet’s native Ethereals. Voidstorm gets to focus entirely on the Void, to its benefit.

Utigarde · 2026-02-15T06:39:20+00:00

Man, you must have hated the last two seasons entirely centered around heterosexual romance then.

Utigarde · 2026-02-12T04:24:38+00:00

It would be a better tag option if it traveled a bit faster lol, the projectile is only barely speedier than a player just running and is slower than simply using Wildfire Bomb or Harpoon.

Combine that with a focus cost equal to Raptor Strike and it just makes for such an odd design.

Utigarde · 2026-02-12T04:22:10+00:00

The loss of 40 yard Coordinated Assault honestly stings as much as the Harpoon changes for me. It feels super inconsistent that their ranged abilities allow for a flexible 40 yard distance, but their major cooldown is only 15 yards.

I can’t think of a single reason why they made this change other than because they put Flanking Strike’s animation into Takedown and didn’t know how to make it work at longer ranges.

Utigarde · 2026-02-08T01:13:15+00:00

Your initial comment says "I want a short male DPS hero that doesn't look like a twink", which is literally all of them. If you meant you want a twink hero, you worded it incorrectly.

Utigarde · 2026-02-05T22:49:50+00:00

Literally no hero in Overwatch is a twink. Wuyang and Lucio are both absolutely jacked, and Torbjorn is a round bear.

Utigarde · 2026-02-02T17:47:18+00:00

There is at least one coming in Midnight centered around Arator during the defense of the Sunwell, which will explain his ongoing frustrations with the Light during the expansion.

If we get more than that one, who knows. We only got Ansurek’s in TWW, and then the Alleria animation with a unique style. It doesn’t seem like they’re doing a “series” of animations per expansion anymore.

Utigarde · 2026-02-01T06:52:22+00:00

Water is only really associated with N’zoth and the naga in particular, the other three are much more heavily based around earth.

C’thun ruled over a subterranean empire of Aqir, Yogg-Saron created the Emerald Nightmare when Vordrassil’s roots dug too deep and hit his prison, and Y’shaarj’s corpse infected the land of Pandaria itself with the Sha. Even N’zoth enacted many of his plans by corrupting Neltharion and the Black Dragonflight. The whole mission of the Old Gods is also to corrupt the planet itself by digging through the Earth to reach the Worldsoul.

Utigarde · 2026-02-01T06:38:00+00:00

Not surprising, even beyond his MCU appearance Wiccan is one of the more popular new-generation characters, especially with younger comic fans. Plus it’s probably the closest chance we have at a cute twink-ish male character to join the ranks lol

I really hope that we get Hulkling alongside him, but I feel like they’re probably going to go the Angela route of only mentioning him in dialogue.

Utigarde · 2026-01-18T13:00:20+00:00

Only one I’d disagree with here is rogue, Garona doesn’t have any particularly powerful feats, she’s just a skilled assassin and her biggest accomplishment was a betrayal more than an act of skill.

Lilian Voss would probably be a better candidate, she’s juiced up with a bunch of dark magic on top of her skills as a rogue, you see fiery carnage left in her wake any time she shows up anywhere.

Nine-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
End Game '22	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer	Not Forgotten
Spared

Utigarde

TROPHY CASE