(WoW) "Wait, did he just..."

Y'know, most of the things I've heard lately that have elicited a "Did that just happen?" response have come from a presidential candidate. That's depressing. I'd rather hear it from a game, to be honest.


Demon Hunters in WoW are initially tasked with a raid on a Legion world. While doing so, they open up portals to call in reinforcements, but doing so requires a sacrificed. I believe the first one lets you gather energy from fallen demons. Okay. The second presents one of your allies who's mortally wounded and offering of himself. Well, okay. The third puts you face-to-face with another demon hunter who explains, "Well, we need a powerful soul for this one, which means... you or me."

I have to admit, I sort of "meta-reasoned" that one. I mean, they can't force-delete your character at that stage, it would be insane. I figured the worst that would happen is having to replay that bit and choose the other alternative to kill the NPC rather than sacrifice the PC.

Instead, if your character sac's him-/herself, it's death as usual for the game - leading to a corpse run through the Twisted Nether. Except... Then Illidan's voice pops up and he says something along the lines of "Oh, you have an immortal demon soul like I do, so you can return to life in a suitable body."

That kind of blew my mind.

I'm going to ignore the "logic" here, because... if the character's soul remains intact, how was it used to power the portal? Isn't the whole point of such a sacrifice to use the energy of the soul as power?

Putting that aside, WoW just casually threw out an explanation for a player character's ability to return from death, something that's been pretty much an unexplained thing since the get-go. It's been accepted as more game mechanic than in-setting lore truth. Yet with a throw-away line, there's suddenly canon that raises all sorts of other questions.

Admittedly, this only explicitly applies to Illidan and the PC demon hunter. But because the gameplay experience is exactly the same as for all other PCs, it inherently makes it sound like it could very well be the same way for all PCs. So do all PCs then have immortal (presumably not all demon) souls?

It almost seems trivial, but sudden canonification of something like that makes my mind go "holy shit!" On the face, it really changes nothing, but if you try to look at the setting like a "real" world... It's a little like coming out and saying "You know how you never see anyone going to the bathroom in Star Wars? Yeah, it's now canon that they actually don't need to biologically."