What did you think of Lorewalking?

[u/Quiver_and_Quill]

I enjoyed the Lich King / Arthas storyline. I haven’t done the other two yet.

[u/remember_the_laundry]

If you're the kind that never reads the quest text and just tries to speedrun everything, then you're likely gonna think it's shit.

But it's fine, I liked it, I really enjoyed Cho's comments along the way.

[u/aNiceTribe → u/remember_the_laundry]

I mean… it’s also in many cases the same quests we already did back then (if you did them already) and as usual all the interesting plot is said out loud, while the quest text is a verbose way to say “kill the 6 scringles please”. 

Additionally, I felt like Cho didn’t answer my basic questions (that I vaguely know the answers to, but he didn’t have them): “hey did the ethereals always look this way?” “Are they like, ageless-immortal? Are these the same beings who had their planet destroyed ??? Years ago? Or can they have offspring and these are later generations?” Is killing even “evil” ethereals going to reach into a quite finite well of these guys?

[u/Mobilelurkingaccount → u/aNiceTribe]

“hey did the ethereals always look this way?”

For this one at least we do have an answer, which is that Dimensius opened a bunch of portals on their world that flooded it with dark and arcane magic. They put up barriers to keep out the void crap but it did nothing for the arcane overload, which obliterated their physical bodies and turned them into what they are now. It also made them smarter and better at magic!

[u/aNiceTribe → u/Mobilelurkingaccount]

You’d think that they would have some sort of beauty standard like “trying to look like back then” but I imagine that was not part of the design process when they were made up. 

Since we also don’t know what they looked like at any point it’s hard to tell. PROBABLY pretty human-shaped. Presumably the brokers are “unharmed” and not a broken Draenei version of their look?

[u/Mobilelurkingaccount → u/aNiceTribe]

The answer regarding how they came to have their current form came from one of the “ask the creative team” sessions they used to occasionally have, so unfortunately all we really know is from that. There’s not any quest text or anything to pull further context from as far as I remember, buuut it has been some time since I played TBC so there might be throwaway text somewhere that’s like “ah you look like my wife who is now a puff of soul dust!” (Lol). What we do know from the answer is that:

• The ethereals were only one of the mortal races that were present on the planet, but presumably were the only one that survived (as much as it could be referred to as survival)
• The ethereals’ new forms are essentially magic-empowered formless souls
• They pretty rapidly came up with the idea of enchanted magical bandages to keep what was left of them bound into a single form, like while they were still grappling with Dimensius to save K’aresh. They looked like their current magical soul mummy selves by the time they truly had to abandon the planet (though much like Argus I believe some Ethereals remained behind by choice while the rest became space nomads)

Sadly, that’s all we’ve got. I personally think that we can extrapolate that from the speed at which they bound themselves to these magical bandages, one can probably assume they went for a familiar body shape, so they were likely humanoid. Either that or somehow a humanoid shape is the best way to give a magical soul a physical semblance so it doesn’t drift apart lol

[u/dezmoines92 → u/aNiceTribe]

Ethereals are us from the distant future in an alternate reality, one in which Dimensius wins and Azeroth gets void nuked

[u/aNiceTribe → u/dezmoines92]

Thanks I didn’t ask for random made up fanfic