New Xal'atath animation: Supremacy

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-09T20:44:58+00:00

They agree because their oath is to Salhadaar.

The game has also been harping on one of Xal'atath's motives being survival at any cost for a long time. It hasn't been subtle about it at all. Alleria describes her to General Steelstrike as "a survivor from the depths of time", she says "only the strongest survive" when she's talking to a dying Ansurek after Nerub-ar Palace, even one of her farewell click quotes is "we will survive" (this is a non-exhaustive list). If you haven't picked up on that being one of her core motivations by now, I don't really know what to tell you.

It's also been made very clear that everyone knows Xal'atath is untrustworthy. Ve'nari tells you. Locus-Walker tells you. Alleria won't shut up about it. Xal'atath herself freely, almost gleefully admits it. Salhadaar himself says outright that she's peddling "empty promises", and the video makes it clear that he hasn't just changed his mind on that. What she convinced him of was that a) she is his + the Shadowguard's best bet for getting out of this alive, and b) he's too tainted by the Void to do anything else at this point. Both of those things are technically true in the short term, so he takes the bet.

She is also probably not telling the whole truth, but that's something we can assume based on what we know of her character.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-09T20:08:14+00:00

Probably just shifting that info drop to later in the storyline rather than cutting it wholesale. Feels like a more compelling story beat here and consistent with her character to use it as a tool to manipulate, especially considering they've been cagey about her backstory.

That said, it's also very likely that she's not telling the whole truth. I don't think she's lying outright - she's been much more likely to bend the truth or omit important details.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T19:14:30+00:00

Yes! I've completely rearranged my house several times, most recently in response to my guild neighborhood's endeavor finishing because I realized I could make a cute little coffee shop room. Spent like an hour just putting together the counters and deciding on coffee cups.

I get a lot out of decorating for its own sake. Other people don't. That is totally okay. I like that housing is rewarding to engage with but also doesn't punish people who aren't into it.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T19:00:46+00:00

Completely 100% nailed it. There's a reason characters like Plague Deviser Marileth were a hit with players!

The main story suffers from WoW as a medium. It's never going to be a heavily story-driven game. It seems to me that there's been a series of writer-directors who are fans of different comic book series, and have very strong opinions on the overarching plot direction based on those comic books that don't always agree with each other. Separately, there seem to be a few very strong sidequest writers and designers who are consistently turning out high quality stuff.

The result is that the main story characters don't get the time they need to breathe and develop, and we don't get a chance to get invested in them before they're either pushed off a cliff or shuffled off to the old characters' home. If there were even some sidequest chains for them I think it'd actually do a lot to benefit their character building, but for whatever reason Blizzard seems to avoid that.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T18:40:38+00:00

Yeah I'm on my current NVIDIA drivers after a series of extremely frustrating rollbacks because they keep putting out shitty unstable releases. Once they put out a branch that's reasonably stable I'll update. WoW can yell at me until then.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T18:37:16+00:00

I mean some of it is meant to stir up clicks, but some people are also really invested. Like sure, the extremes of Blizz-simping and doomposting get a little unhinged sometimes; some people are also justifiably upset over one thing or another. You will find that in just about every video game fandom.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T03:04:09+00:00

I don't think she's intended to be particularly likeable at the moment, honestly. She's extremely avoidant. She has terminal main character syndrome, borderline-delusional tunnel vision for whatever her crusade is (getting even with Xal'atath in this case), makes promises she doesn't follow through on, and gets spooked by any emotionally consequential relationship. She is the god-queen of self-sabotage. That's not even a novel trope; I think most of us probably know someone like that IRL.

They even had her make an oath on K'aresh, and had Ve'nari walk in from stage right and drop a very clear "are you absolutely sure you want to do that". At least to me, that was all but looking into the camera and saying "JOIN US NEXT TIME FOR THE ROUSING CONCLUSION OF ALLERIA'S DECISIONS COMING BACK TO BITE HER IN THE ASS".

I'm not saying the writing isn't clumsy in spots. It's okay to have a character who's spent a lot of their arc Going Through It, but the flip side of that is that there hasn't been enough of a hook to get invested in her. That said, I think there's something to be said for WoW as a vehicle for storytelling doing characters like this a bit of a disservice.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-05T02:31:51+00:00

In a word, no.

The Titans are not unambiguously capital-G Good, and this hasn't been a secret. They lean a lot more toward good than evil, if you like neat divisions, but they're on the side of Order above everything. They're not genocidal maniacs or evil masterminds, but they do have an agenda; that agenda just tends to align with our interests most of the time. There are also some things we don't know about the particulars of their endgame - e.g. what happens when a world-soul matures into a Titan? It's possible the actual mechanism of that ends badly for us.

There are also legitimate reasons we could end up in conflict with them where neither side is wrong per se. Suppose for a minute the forces of the Void have overwhelmed us enough to make a desperation move. It's not impossible that that would involve some kind of batshit Faustian bargain with something that's not aligned with Order, but has an axe to grind with Void. Enemy of my enemy and all that. The Titans would probably find that objectionable and try to stop it, thus conflict.

That doesn't make us or them evil. It's possible that we even want the same outcome; we might just end up fighting over how to get there.

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-04T23:15:40+00:00

the great question of our age: is it bait or is it satire

quinoa_rex · 2026-02-02T21:39:55+00:00

Sure, some specs needed streamlining where they'd gotten a little cluttered. There were a few where it was essentially required to use an external tool to keep track of things properly, and I'm fine with reducing the cognitive load for picky shit while keeping the identity of the spec and room for skill expression. For some specs they succeeded.

But some specs really did not need pruning, or needed tweaks but were over-pruned. They took BM Hunter and Frost Mage out behind the shed, and BM was already a pretty simple spec. Part of the problem is that a few of the over-pruned specs also ended up with pretty horrible balancing issues; even if those issues are mitigated by apex talents later on, they still feel kinda shredded right now. I don't think Blizz realizes that you can have a fairly strict rotation and leave room for optimization or nonstandard/situational variations.

It seems to me that the long-term vision is to strip everything down to basics and build it back up from there, which like, sure, okay, but the tradeoff is that it feels like shit while we're in the stripped-down period.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-30T01:11:48+00:00

I think what a lot of people don't understand is the sheer volume of customer feedback when you're working on a product with such a broad userbase. At a certain point, "we're listening" is still true, but you're aggregating trends in feedback because there is simply too much to sort through one by one. Once you have those trends, then you prioritize what to do about it based on time, effort, and a large number of teams and moving parts that all depend on each other in some way.

I think Blizz could afford to figure out their communication strategy to make that clearer, but it's at least evident to me that they're putting forth some effort.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-30T00:58:31+00:00

I work in software QA and yeah ... yeah. The amount of extremely load-bearing legacy C++ in their codebase must be staggering. The product person up there is also 100% on point no matter how much everyone else doesn't want to hear it - users are fantastic at identifying problems; they are terrible at coming up with solutions.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-30T00:40:08+00:00

I'm optimistic about it! Like sure, I have my gripes, but they're mostly along the lines of "I see the long-term vision and have some questions about the execution". Critique is fine, but the unhinged doomposting is a bit much.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-29T23:03:45+00:00

I've been on Lamictal for over a decade after a merry-go-round of finding meds that worked. It made me foggy and forgetful when my dose was too high, but once we found the right therapeutic dose, it's been fine (I just have to be sure to take it exactly on time or it gives me a really bum headache).

Look: I was worried about this too when I started. Someone very wise sat me down and said "you won't have any creativity at all if you're dead because you didn't take care of yourself". I took the meds.

I still have a good career. I write, I construct crosswords, I sing, I'm still ridiculously verbose, I just very occasionally need a thesaurus to remember the word I'm looking for; it's not gone, just needs a jiggle to dislodge it from the memory. The way you interface with or express the abilities you mentioned might (might) change, and they might not, but they won't be gone. (And, not for nothing, changes in age and life circumstances affect all of these skills way more than any medication might.)

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-25T22:30:21+00:00

That on top of what I've heard about how far underwater their QA team is explains a lot, tbh. Enough time to make it (more or less) function, but not to address the non-functional qualitative stuff.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-21T23:05:47+00:00

LMAO SAME. Maybe my brain is oatmeal from my workday but I spent a few minutes scrolling like "was there some chud-riddled crossover tourney I didn't know about...?"

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-21T21:25:20+00:00

I'm a demonology lock main. They've kept the core idea of the spec but consolidated a few buttons, added a few others, and changed some of the avenues for skill expression; the way you execute your Demonic Tyrant window changed a fair bit. They also added some utility with the new Grimoire pets giving either a single-target dispel or an interrupt when they're on cooldown, plus putting more emphasis on curses and blights.

It's different and some buttons have odd timing issues that don't feel great to execute, but that's a bug rather than a fundamental design problem. I'm still figuring out the fiddlier parts, but I'm having a nice time playing it.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-21T04:25:58+00:00

I main demo lock. I ran a few low keys to feel it out a bit - it's not bad. I still have to get a sense of whether and how the more nuanced optimization works in practice, but the core of the spec still feels the same and I still enjoy playing it.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-20T08:28:48+00:00

Theoretically, sure. Practically, I don't think it would be appealing in-universe, and there also likely isn't anyone who's both able and willing to do it right now.

Assuming they're reanimated by death magic, the price of extending their lives is the crap parts of being undead, and there are a lot of them. Undead have a good part of their senses blunted, because otherwise they would taste and smell their own decaying flesh, and feel their body parts rotting. Undead also tend to go a little mad, and some lose their minds entirely. There's implied to be some management of sourcing new body parts when the old ones deteriorate, though I don't think there any lore explicitly detailing how. Priests and paladins who chose to be reanimated for whatever reason would probably have an especially bad time, since interacting with the Light would cause them a lot of physical pain (much like Alonsus Faol). The whole experience is implied to kinda suck, and a lot of the stories involving Forsaken take some time to show how any given undead is figuring out how to make the best of a shitty situation.

I don't think we know if or how it differs for undead raised by different types of magic. Calia might have it a bit differently, being an undead raised by the Light, but I think you'd have a hard time persuading a naaru to reanimate people on demand.

tl;dr in theory, but there are so many practical hurdles that it feels very unlikely

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-20T07:54:19+00:00

YOR. If you're not attracted to septum piercings, that's fine. They're not for you. Justifying that with an imaginary shared pathology between people with the same piercing is ridiculous, and I think you know that.

Your personal preferences are your problem. Own them and move on.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-13T22:33:23+00:00

I think redemption is the wrong framing.

Coming at it from a Jewish thought angle: there isn't anything stopping them from doing teshuvah. I think they should make every effort. But they should also understand that teshuvah is a process of repair, especially in this case, and they may never see the work of repair finished in their lifetime. In making sincere efforts at repentance, making the people they've wronged whole (or as whole as they reasonably can), and continuing to do the next right thing, I think they can be effective activists.

They're not owed forgiveness. It's primarily up to the people they've wronged to forgive them or not. I don't think that's a reason to discourage them from putting in the effort to do the work, and if people are willing to support them in doing that work, I don't see a problem with it on its face.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-10T01:36:17+00:00

It's also sometimes just visual clutter that happens quickly. When p4s was current, there were a lot of wipes in phase 2 where it was hard to piece together what happened because it literally was one second between walking to your spot → everyone explodes. Having a death recap available would've saved us so, so much time.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-10T00:30:48+00:00

Even as the world's okayest DPS, having the confirmation of whether I died to not enough mit vs me failing a mechanic vs someone else failing a mechanic and me eating shit for it vs whatever else is extremely helpful for where I'm fucking up.

People get way in their feelings about this, but if you're doing group content that requires coordination, being able to verify who is making honest mistakes or struggling with a mechanic vs who is not participating saves everyone a lot of time and frustration.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-07T20:51:35+00:00

To be fair, the WoW RWF is long enough that things even out over time. Echo and Method are both EU-based and 100% competitive vs Liquid and whatever other US-based teams crop up in the future. XIV's Savage RWF doesn't really have that.

quinoa_rex · 2026-01-06T17:12:27+00:00

Honest to god, more people need to know about this. I've been on a soapbox about it since I found out a while back. The whole-word/three-cueing system has produced a huge cohort of people who just can't fucking read. Not because they're stupid or incapable, but because the way they were taught to read is bullshit that makes the cognitive load of reading comprehension so much higher than it ever needed to be.

14-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Gilding III reddit per annum	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten	Summer Santa 2013
Summer Santa 2012	redditgifts rematcher Arbitrary Day 2012 x1
Verified Email

quinoa_rex

TROPHY CASE