We Were Wrong About The Arathi In WoW's Next Expansion

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[@Zoeila]

I would urge people to brush up on kul tiras lore which also dates back 1200 years when there was a war between the natives and colonizing descendants of the gilneans leading to gorak tul

[@3rdPartyIntervener]

Light for the Light God, Skulls for the Skull Throne.

[@reeven1721]

Have you read the Wheel of Time, Matt and Bel? The Seanchan parallels with the Arathi are gigantic.

[@stormbravetale1656]

But do the Arathi have the Texan drawl...?

[@stonedhomer621]

Yrel's light bound orcs join the alliance and the imperial humans join the horde.

[@borisfrlic]

Pls Jesus no

[@Andromedes]

Ah yes, make playable another niche race, that fits only one archetype. Just like Alliance got lightforged draenei and void elves, we totally need another holy drenched race.

[@gimilkhad8169]

barf

[@tsj8726]

It would be horde joining Empire of Arathi, horde lore populations except Amani trolls is so little, it would be 2 mostly human factions then

[@0hvist]

Nah, leave the Lightbound as a threat to Azeroth: that way we'll be able to get Playable Arakkoa who are in complete opposition to the Lightbound due to their history with Light Zealotry from the Adherents of Rukhmar we fought against in _WoD_

[@burtonkevin32]

The idea of “shoving light into it” is the same way the ashbringer works.(also how nathreziem work too)It was a void or some type of crystal that a bunch of light wielders threw a bunch of light into. It changed the crystal and thus we got the ashbringer. Which then became corrupt after its wielder was “corrupt” so if this crystal is anything like that then it’s like an indicator of Azeroth’s “state” reflecting what she’s feeling.

[@3rdPartyIntervener]

There's probably a Na'aru inside that crystal, kinda like there was a Na'aru inside Oshu'gun back in Burning Crusade's Nagrand.

[@Sanguiris]

It's 100% some Naaru, either that or something else that rotates between light and Void, but so far the only thing we know of that does is the Naaru

[@LordFoxxyFoxington]

Im getting 40K Emperor of Man vibes from the Arathi Empire.

[@borisfrlic]

Well duh

[@LordFoxxyFoxington]

@@borisfrlic Eloquent.

[@borisfrlic]

@@LordFoxxyFoxington Thank you

[@AllOnTheChannel]

Praise be the God Emperor of Mankind

[@colew306]

Maybe this Light Empire is really really going to want the Sunwell for its own??

[@ERBrd]

Makes a lot of sense could be they think they have a claim to it

[@borisfrlic]

Excellent theory

[@brunohommerding3416]

I would bet the Beledar is a crashed light ship

[@jessewilson6404]

It's kinda shaped like the vindicaar ship

[@Khadharphak]

That could be very possible, it shares naming conventions with other crystalline ships, Genedar, Exodar, Xenedar... Perhaps a remnant of an ages-old invasion/scouting force by the light, it's naaru commander was trapped there underground and seeks to use the Arathi to free it

[@jvdpc7]

16:53 that is literally what happens in the Priest Order Hall campaign. So yes, it would work.

[@Raika63]

Possible alternative name explanation - Lothar is a name for orphans without a family name.

[@afrodan7350]

The only thing that kind of annoys me about hallow fall is that they have only been there for 15 years and in that time they somehow built an entire city and a whole ass cathedral. Most IRL cathedrals took over 100 years to complete the Sagrada Familia in Spain for example is still not complete after 140 years. I know its a video game but it bugs me so much lol.

[@darkcardking]

If its 15 years, and the current year is lets say year 41 (dragonflight start Year 40 and each expansion lasts about a year in game time), then according to the timeline they have been there since year 25/26. Thats Classic to BC on the timeline. Also it means that the stone has been going dark for the last 7-8 years, about half the timeline. Remember, in the grand scheme of time (at least according to the Warcraft wiki) alot of shit has happened on the planet in a relatively short amount of time.

[@gunzorzz]

I would say the Alliance was always pretty advanced. Humans alone might have hit a lot of snags here and there. But the Ally has the dwarfs and gnomes. Dwarfs had their tanks and incredibly at forging advanced weapons like rifles. Gnomes allrdy had electricity back in vanilla. They made a underground railway between 2 mayor cities. Now that is advanced in my book. atleast compared to any other race when it comes to Technology.

[@SuzakuX]

At Blizzcon they said the Hallowfall Arathi were just an expedition that traveled to Khaz Algar from a kingdom across the sea. Guess you guys missed it... people have been assuming they're from Avaloren since November. How long the settlement has been in Hallowfall was definitely changed, I think they wanted to make sure some of the Hallowfall Arathi still have a concrete connection to their homeland so their eventual return home carries more weight.

[@Toastybees]

Faerin says they arrived when she was a child but there is simply not enough manpower or time for them to build all those structures down there.

[@stormstrider1990]

When I first took a look at the concept art of the Arathi armor sets (that are now confirmed to be outdoor/dungeon/delves sets), I immediately thought of the Empire from Warhammer, more specifically the Warrior Priests with some of the steampunk College of Engineers themes mixed in, which was even further explored in the Age of Sigmar, its much less popular successor. It's rather obvious where Blizzard got the inspiration for the design of these Arathi, and with the reveal of a secret Arathi Empire ruled by an emperor, it's more or less confirmed. Since we already know where the next two expansions will take place, I doubt we'll see the rest of the Arathi Empire anytime soon, but it's still a pretty cool idea. The only question is: will they be friends or foes?

[@Shiirow]

Well we have the humans in stormwind are the Australians, the humans in gilneas are Great Britain, and now we have have new humans who are Germany.

[@Melyar942]

Australians?

[@Drakenkorrin]

These arathi's really give me "Star Elves" vibes from the Feist novels. Secret super race we've never seen or heard of before that have a super powerful army and are more advanced than the other races. And they've set up a forward base somewhere?

[@nathaliemlromer]

Here's a question I have about them being an Arathi/High Elf hybrid. Where are the High Elves? Were they... errr... wiped out during their war with the spider people? Or, are these hybrids the foot soldiers, busy conquering this region for the empire you mentioned in the video? There are also implications in regard to this " approximately 90% of their population was slaughtered during the Third War" which is a fact that Alleria Windrunner would be aware of, and if the empire consists of whatever of the ancient High Elves, then we need to question if they also lost their mortality like other elves OR are they still immortal? With the latter also making you wonder how old the Arathi are? Are they really descendents or are they the Arathi who had left 1,200 years ago? I got curious, and found "Ignaeus Trollbane" of whom is stated "a prominent general of the Arathorian Empire during the Troll Wars" (the Troll Wars was 2,800 years ago). But here's your mention of an empire...

[@Melyar942]

with the 3 year time skip from sl to df, I think it would have been around mop when they arrived down there? Btw. as far as I remember, whenever a Naaru is in it's dying stage, it goes into a void stage. (the same happened when the Draenei landed in Draenor) I'd recon the crystal is a Naaru that was stabbed by Sargeras's sword. ("That sword was pointed at something/someone") Perhaps the light send out some Naaru the way the void send out the old gods.

[@PlaymeoffSia]

We getting the good ending boys, Garithos the Emperor!

[@Gronmin]

That ending conflict line was gold

[@Raika63]

Wait... Vindicaar, exodar... Belore is sun in thalassian, draenei ships end in ar... Is it the Sun/Star Ship? Is it a ship with a naaru aboard, perhaps even the same one in the vision of the future where the light and the void clash?

[@charlayned]

Here's a thought, does time pass the same way on the surface as underground? Maybe the way it is measured is different, so 15 years up top could have been 1200 years. The crystal could have been influencing how the time passes down there and the lore of the Arathi has been able to advance.

[@Kross415]

We're going to be forging relations with them, making the player care about them on this expansion and then we'll be forced to fight them on midnight when the army of the light goes nuclear, with probably some Arathi rebels/civil war.

[@Raika63]

Pretty sure the name isn't naaru, it's elven. I.e. sun is belore in thalassian. I definitely think it's naaru or naaru related, but I'm not sure they know that. It kind of looks like a fragment of an army of the light ship, *or* a giant naaru heart i.e. xera's from legion.

[@abbiejo6822]

Omg Kobolds are paladins 🤯🤣 I wanna see a Kobold church now, the cathedral of the holy candle

[@jmanaloto6172]

Im hoping the Emperor turns out to be a Lightforged Undead. It would have alot of plot potential relating to Lordaeron and Stormwind if that was the case. And people becoming undead for whatever reason isnt beyond the lore, since Meryl Winterstorm made himself undead during the troll wars.

[@karlfranz9373]

He's a lightforged undead that was forever bounded on his throne! Big E time!

[@ekscalybur]

Lightforged undead, right after we get some dry water.

[@jakekinzly5162]

Turalyon, while he was with the army of the light, didn't they battle for over 1000 years? but the idea of time is warped and as such, is it possible that this Arathi group of people were brought here by the light from a different period of time? Maybe the future? This future might have an emperor?

[@Myurridthaekish]

The emperor is the fifth old god

[@ZodaSoda]

This is a major retcon and i dont think they're going to explain anything about what this "Empire" was doing during all these cataclysmic events they've apparently ignored, they likely wont even mention the whole Shadowlands drama, which btw you never met any of them in the after life either, weird that, If the Emperor ends up a "bad guy" during the World Soul saga its just yet another unearned villain, None of the major basically demi gods have ever met them or talked about them, and the Star suddenly turning void after the demon stabbed the planet better be a good reason, cause Sargeras sword isnt Void and im predicting "she was weakened" which is just kinda weak story telling and just makes Sargeras right.

[@SuzakuX]

Everything that currently exists in the game was originally a single continent, like 75% sank into the ocean during the Sundering. You don't seem to have an issue with there being no exchange of ideas or conflict between the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Northrend from 10,000 years ago up until Warcraft 3. Why should Avaloren be any different? They're on the other side of the planet dealing with their own shit. Ancient Kalimdor was the side of the world that the old gods slammed into, so it's where the titans enforced order. As for the demigods, they aren't omniscient. The titans haven't been present on Azeroth since the fall of the Black Empire. The keepers are just big giants in charge of watching over their designated regions. And we know Odyn knows about Avaloren from the reports in Ulduar. The "heretic" Arathi committed some grave offense against a keeper named Innaria and Odyn sent his forces (presumably the valarjar) to try and bring them to justice, but none of their expeditions made it through the Storming Sea.

[@ZodaSoda]

@@SuzakuX Simple, because the Arathi are supposed to be "advanced" I wouldnt expect simple kingdoms who where fighting each other or orcs for years to be able to amass a exploratory navy across a great ocean, the same way Europe failed to discover the Americas until there was relatively enough peace for kings and nobles to fund exploratory voyages based on the science of a round earth. Even tho they were quite capable for a good 400 years before they actually did. The Arathi are supposed to be an advanced rather large nation from what we hear and yet they have no footprint at all, im not even truly asking for a footprint for 1200 years, mearly a footprint for the last 15 years instead of being a deus ex machina faction pulled out of Metzen asshole. The Odyn shit the best they got and its still fuck all, because they're bad at a slow burn, they could have used that thread to slowly build them up and introduce them while filling any plot holes, but instead they jumped the gun and decided they're basically a nation with an emperor and figuring out the past plot be damned, we need a "cool" set piece. Unfortunately "cool" set pieces tend to lose their shimmer in the light of making sense. But who are we kidding this is Blizzard, they'll just retcon the plot holes.

[@dio6274]

How is turalyon not hopping in the nearest airship and flying over to join an empire devoted to the light asap?

[@Telleryn]

I wonder what the Arathi have been up to this whole time, we rock up and they're all advanced and stuff, probably acting like they're all important and we're like "so we killed all the old gods, thwarted an undead apocalypse, prevented the destruction of Azeroth (or all life on it) at least 4 times, thwarted multiple invasions from a cosmos-spanning army of demons lead by a titan, helped defeat and imprison said titan after freeing all the other ones, fixed the realm of death and prevented the effective reorigination of the entire universe at the hands of some loser we've all decided to forget about... what you guys been up to?"

[@ub3rfr3nzy94]

I'm gonna be honest this is exactly what I wanted. A continent on the other side of azeroth, with humans and stuff. Imagine if there was a bunch of orcs from the second war who washed up there, and basically kept fighting the humans and never knew the war ended. But new human lore lets us give a reason for black and asian people to exist. When they added them, I'ma be honest I had a gamer moment, that annoyed the shit outa me, because no we're meant to believe that these other human races always existed despite not even having a homeland. come on. With a new continent, you could literally give them a place that they come from.

[@sdrs2713]

Wait so Sargeras's sword did, what. Make a Naaru in Beledar trip and accidentally break its neck?

[@Shiirow]

Sargeras slipped his sword into Azeroth and hit a Naaru, bricking it like a Xbox with a red ring of death.

[@Hekatt1]

was hoping this was about player housing since it had the word home in it lol

[@Slec80]

light lord core?

[@historianmedieval7834]

Arathi have only been in Hallowfall for 15 years, but the Arathorian empire crumbled a thousand years ago, so I'm guessing these Arathi are the descendents of the original Arathorian humans and elves but sometime around when the empire crumbled (slightly before then) the emperor sent off his giant armada to Bela'dar and that armada was teleported from the past, into year 26ADP (15 years before the end of DF which is going to be 41ADP*), which is the year the Sunwell was purified, into Hallowfall to protect the light crystal from an impending future. We learn in Eon's fringe that time travel is imprecise when used in anyway, shape, or form. I believe the Arathi were meant to be teleported to the here and now, and wow has only now caught up. *The year is subject to change by blizzard, as the gap between SL and DF is 4 years, and we may be presented a large timeskip after DF.

[@historianmedieval7834]

Also: Draenei ships are called: Xenedar, Genedar, Exodar, Vindicaar. all of which have a Latin word mixed with the Latin suffix 'ar' which means 'intrument for special purpose'. Xenedar means 'foreign intrument', Genedar means 'people's intrument', Exodar means 'fleeing from hate insturment', and Vindicaar means 'punishing intrument'; thus beledar wither means 'beautiful intrument', or (what is mroe likely) 'war instrument'.

[@SuzakuX]

Why are you bringing up time travel? The Hallowfall Expedition came on airships from a previously unreachable continent beyond the Storming Sea, which a splinter faction of Arathi settled thousands of year ago, all but confirmed to be Avaloren.

[@burtonkevin32]

War doesn’t drive tech advances in wow lol. War halts it for them, it’s always a world ending threat so no time to prosper whereas imagine less world ending threats and being able to use tech left over from those before you…tech wasn’t good enough to not crash and have em all die but one mage 😢

[@d4mephisto]

stop it michael! don't say the name zovaal! we hate it xD

[@OldManDan313]

wouldnt all of the half elves still have a parent still alive from the time of the split?

[@SoufianeChaoui-c4z]

35 min ain’t a clip

[@ScottKent]

All I know is that the Arathi are possibly the best at infrastructure...look at what they built in 15 years...just north of Orlando it took us over 20 to get one building finished and I4 still isn't done. Do you think the Arathi bring along magic prefab buildings or something? And it's not surprising that the mages died when the ships crashed in the sea...you try swimming in a robe...of course, the fact that the guys in armor made it...hmmm

[@giantslug6969]

The Arathi have been fighting the Nerubians for a 100 years or whatever, they just flubbed the story because they've been doing the fighting back at their main land of operation, not at the TWW location. They accidentally spoiled some future details and they then tried to fix that.

[@jasoncopley1842]

15 years ago on the timeline is vanilla right? What happened? Or maybe we see it happen in SoD?

[@corryncbr]

wowpedia says vanilla was 15 years ago, not sure any other place that would keep track of that, so its possible we're seeing things happening in SoD that would relate to this lore

[@sorarockss93]

Depends what year it is in TWW. If it's 41-42 that means TBC.

[@Falzyker]

Probably Vanilla/SoD, remember the crystal of phase 1? I'm pretty sure that is going to be relevant.

[@Shiirow]

linking anything in modern wow to season of discovery is almost as stupid as having Bald Aizen in the Soullands being the mastermind of everything Warcraft.

[@GrumpyWelshDad]

Uriel? Emperor?

[@thisone6uy]

Beledar Bellular Bellular Beledar

[@vinnythewebsurfer]

25:15 you know who ELSE knows a thing or 3 about fighting the void and could be useful in our battles against Xal'atath, especially since it was their people who had to stop her the first time on Azeroth? Amani trolls. Would also be a nice bone to throw for Horde players to work on so Midnight isn’t just more night elf/high elf wanking (no the blood elves aren’t gonna be enough and idk who thinks they’ll be the ones they’ll put in charge of the narrative of midnight anyway).

[@Kevin-vc3jf]

more expansions means more retcons disguised as lore expansions or "revelations".. i like warcraft lore but over the years im starting to lose interest in it. Some of it makes sense some of it messes things up.

[@Kafj302]

I am like number 151

[@lankyeric]

i cant listen to this, the guy keeps smacking his lips into the mic, it sounds like im inside his mouth while hes eating

[@UndeadMozelle]

Suggesting that there's significant leftist presence on Twitter. xD

[@ERBrd]

Its not just that "oh ligt based" rwism its that its just exhausting to do another "church bad" plot. WoW has done it before and it made sense in its time but when every dracula adaptation is shitting on catholics and every priest in tv is a pedo its just a giant eye roll for a lot of us. But thats just how it is I guess.

[@ERBrd]

+ Sometimes its better just to have a straight story like demons are bad angels are good rather than trying to subvert perennial archetypes or you wind up trying to make really stupid and incoherent stories like Shadowlands that had to pull a secret third thing out of a hat.

[@borisfrlic]

Every Dracula has to shit on Catholics because the actual Vlad Tepes Basarab became known for slaughtering Papal servants trying to turn the Serb / Vlah Orthodoxy (which combines our ancestral faith , traditions, cults, etc... with Jesus’ Word) to Catholicism. You can’t not have Dracula fighting the Papists.

[@KiaStout]

I don't know if that's what they're doing, though. As we are allying with some of the light based people. It looks more like the story is saying that the light can have its crazed extremist without being bad.

[@Gronmin]

It seems more like church grey, and not ultimate good rather than bad, and how it's more about the person and how you use something

[@DraphEnjoyer]

"The god's are actually... LE EVIL and don't care about the mortals!" Once again FF14 wins

[@thecombatcleric5702]

Please god no anduin + new girl flirting, and please god no cool big new light empire religion bad trope, its so over done, give us a cool religious light empire please!

[@Rigosamos1]

some woke shiet wit h this Arathians XD - "They're biologicly are half elves but they dont describe themselves as such "xD

[@BlueFireDrakka]

to reach the point of ethnic homogeneity from breeding within an insular population: it takes four to five generations for ethnic distinction to combine enough that you cant really tell what came from who, eventually you reach a point where everyone has similar enough traits that they become their own distinct thing, and while we aren't really sure exactly how long an elf can live for, we know that humans can live Up to 100 or so more with magic augmentation but the average is around 80-90s. but we also have to take into consideration the ratio of Humans to elves, if there is more Human DNA in the pool then the human DNA will eventually out compete the Elven DNA for trait distinction. but the pattern Ive noticed with WoW's half breeds is they tend to absorb more racial traits from their mothers, Garona has more orc traits than Draenei, and in the case of half elves, Vereesa and Alleria's sons are more elf and both have human fathers if two half elves who have opposites with parents as one has a human mother and an elf father bumps uglies with another who has an elf mother and a human father they'd be half and half enough that whatever their child looks like would basically just become what we've seen as the Arathi be. it would probably only take around 400-500 years for that to happen.

[@Kiobao]

Faelin is either a decendant and that she will be the "True" leader of the arathi after the emperor is dead, or she was given the name by someone as a form of hope for her since she has a lot of "promise" and will be given a lot of plot armor. Honestly, "Church bad" stuff has been done so much that it's a boring plot point for me since it has been done so much recently. However, it is likely what is going to happen.

[@voidokami1427]

Brother, I am become LAMP! "We'll bang, ok?" Shepard no!

[@pholkhero2145]

Having only heard secondhand, seems a given crystal is a naaru. So maybe sargaras was aiming at the crystal tho to prevent the naarus light-based ordering of the universe for the greater good, ie, do to the universe what they wanted to do to illidan.

[@bryanm255]

Sargeras was trying to wake up azeroth. He went after titan architecture