I love reading Porter's analysis of the cinematic. After following him for years on Twitter, its great to see these Wowhead posts <3! Nice work!
i wonder if the "huge change" between Ansurek's before and after is partly due to her withering like the others. even if they were of a higher cast you can see that in Neferess as well.
The parallel between this and Azshara's Warbringer is insane - I absolutely love it and I am so excited for more. "Arise my Queen" - N'Zoth"Long live Queen Ansurek" - Xala'tath
I wish nerubians were a bit less human. Might be an unpopular opinion, but I honestly loved the fact that they were hyper-intelligent/advanced insects and not just humans with spider bodies. Nerubians aren't suppose to look pretty or cute. They're supposed to be a nightmare fuel.
In the cinematic xal’atath has a bandage on her hand/wrist reminiscent of a mummys bandage. Is it her blood that shes used to ascend the nerubians (would that work as its not her body) or is the elven body shes posessing breaking down on her unable to hold her essence?
I found myself pausing the cinematic a couple times to study the large stone mural on the wall of the queen's chamber, seemed to depict an old god and faceless ones, with tendrils reaching towards some shape floating above the ground, maybe a star or an artifact of some kind? Wonder if that's a hint about what Xal'atath is after.I also think it's odd that the Nerubians become more humanoid after ascension, based on our current knowledge. If they're being infused with the blood of old gods, I feel like they should become more monstrous (sprouting tentacles, more eyes, huge mouths with lots of teeth, etc.). Which leads me to believe that maybe Xal has put some of her current body's blood into the mix to possibly give herself total control of them because, if anything, they're becoming more elven in appearance: Upright body, slender frame, lips, nose, one set of eyes.
I just came to say, that the dagger used to stab Queen Neferess, is the same knife dropped by Nexus-Princess Ky'vesa, Regicide.
An alternate reason for the Nerubians becoming more 'humanoid'....... this dangles the possiblity of some subfaction becoming an Allied Race.Just thinkin' out loud......
Spiders with noses look ridiculous and disgusting at the same time. I wanted ugly horror spiders not Driders. I hope they dont change the model of old WotLK nerubians as they did with the dryads or faceless that now have a face.
Describing Neferess’s betrayal of a sister kingdom to genocide and neceotic enslavement as “pragmatic” is certainly a tale meant to sanitize what a steaming pile of dung the gorlboss queen was.No sense of honor or loyalty, just pure selfish self-preservation at any cost.
Even this is little like Azshara all over again Nerubian queen as character of spider feels lot more interesting as boring old nagas we know since Warcraft 3 but for nerubians least of game side we met them only in Wrath of the lich king expansion with 2 dungeons runs and thats pretty much it i know there is lot more story their backgrounds in texts tough im not surprised if we met mantids also again in some point in TWW as one mantid says in MOp raid after player slain them: We will meet again... as we do meet old gods too not all them are dead we jsut need to wait for more story reveal it secrets
I'm going on record saying that, over the next three expansions, this will ultimately tie back into how the elves came to be - that or there will be elves who take the black blood to regain their immortality.I'm fairly sure the emphasis on their transformation into a "humanoid" form is key here, which is an obvious thing to point out, but I am convinced this is going to come back into play with the origin mythos of the Nelves or Highborne.
