Why magic is bad for Humanity Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Game Discussion
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Link to the first one here. This is mainly going to go over some of the stuff I missed, and add a couple of new things.

Alright, so first things first, I neglected to mention that magic is literally born from pure evil, or, to be more precise, Chaos. It’s actually funny how well this fits, and as @diamondkfc pointed out, it literally empowers you the more evil you are.

There were also arguments about how things would be the same way with or without magic, as stated in the second comment by @Pedro,

at that point everything would be boring, religion would take over humanity just like it did with us, pointless wars over beliefs would begin causing thousands of information stores like libraries to be destroyed, and countless lives being taken away just because someone didn’t have enough proof to believe in whatever.

but these were just illogical from the start, as the pure destructive capabilities of a person with magic far outstrips any number of normal human beings without it. Until @techlevel80 gives us more lore about the war ages, we are just going to have to assume that they weren’t nearly as bad as the wars after magic was introduced. This is supported by the fact that the world was destroyed twice, once, between the clash between two extremely powerful wizards, and secondly, the Cursebeard War, which had Durza blow up a chunk of the planet, if I recall correctly, and polluted that entire part of the ocean.

This is another point I’d like to point out actually. Magic is actually a pollutant. We’ve seen its effects in making entire ecosystems devoid of life, destroying islands with large waves and tsunamis, as well as generally mutating life and making things worse for the environment. And remember, the first of these was between 2 people.

There were also comments like the one from @Pip_Zog, such as this one:

This is a bad argument right here, guns are created and give evil people power, humans are created they destroyed the world, it really depends, some people can use it for good and some people can use it for bad and there would always be bad that is how the universe works :man_shrugging: it doesn’t matter what happened really bad always exist.

which I also found problematic, as there is a difference between a manufactured gun, which is usually regulated by the government, and magic, which anyone can be born with, and is also magnitudes greater in the potential damage it could cause. This also brings in the argument for whether or not power itself is what is evil, as it is a corrupting force, that only begets more power, but that’s philosophy and I suck at that.

and then there’s @Dragon, who had some, uh, contreversial views. To state his comment:

and we’d be better off without magic?
even if the world didn’t get fucked a few times, humans would of still done war, no?
the war ages lasted for a fucking thousand years before prometheus introduced magic

you could also say magic being in the hands of less people grants less opportunity for crime
even if only 5% of people were wizards, thats a 1/20 chance out of anyone becoming a criminal
not to mention, many wizards join the MC and guilds, which actively enforce and hunt criminals

is inequality of positions a bad thing? would you rather promote someone who can tear apart mountains as a general or a regular peasant?
just because there is inequality doesn’t mean its a bad thing

even with the presence of magic, theres still plenty of bandits and mercs, which would exist even with the absence of magic

wealth redistribution is dumb,

yeah but the whole thing about criminals… is that they break laws lmao

only POWERFUL wizards can live for centuries, meaning the amount that could actually live that long is incredibly low

assuming magic is only destructive only takes to account what we see in the game
you could use it to protect shit, transportation, etc

to an extent this is already true with cerulean blood, but it isn’t that big of a deal, not like “better heir” and shit thats just horny talk

uh.
yeah.
So, I feel like maybe he was trying to argue a point there, but the execution was… subpar, to say the least. He stated that

just because there is inequality doesn’t mean its a bad thing

which is just wrong, which I hope we can all agree on, and as I explained in my rebuttal, this still meant the concentration of power within the elite minority, who more likely than not powerful in other areas as well, being rich as well as filling roles in the government, and seems to miss my point entirely, by saying that

yeah but the whole thing about criminals… is that they break laws lmao

yeah no shit sherlock. My whole point was that they shouldn’t just be given power at birth that allows them to fuck over an entire town of innocents, that of course, needs even more magic to solve the problem. Power begets power, magic begets magic. It’s even shown during gameplay. Have you ever slaughtered an innocent village at max level for fun? It’s fun as hell and shows how deeply skewed the power imbalance in the world is. Even the most heavily armored man here is still just that: a man. In WOM/AO however, this simple man, if you can even call them that at this point, are powerful enough to completely wipe out anyone who’s weaker than them, and then some MC captain has to come over to blow up half the town to kill this one guy. The whole property damage thing, while it is a meme, actually makes a lot of sense. We glorify these epic battles, but what eventually happens to the people who are forced to simply watch as bystanders, not knowing whether the next stray blast will hit them. Let’s not forget that the world blowing up after Durza and Theo’s fight was because Durza missed an attack. It doesn’t matter how many heroes there are to stop the villains if simply fighting causes almost as much damage as the person they are fighting against.

There were also people making connections to wealth inequality and gun control, which was fine, I just wanted to remind them to keep it to WOM specific metaphors, please.

And… that’s it for this post. I’d like to see what you think of my theory.

EDIT: Link to official lore doc

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bruh

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this is how you answer

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yes

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wait, cant people make stuff with magic, like if someone has metal they can make metal structures to repair things?

edit: found out you can make buildings with magic so I don’t see property damage being too big of a deal, they probably don’t want to keep doing it all the time which is why they fine you for it, but if no one can pay they probably hire some magic users to repair stuff.

Also this power imbalance thing can be shown in real life. ever heard of school shootings where a person takes out 10-20 people in under a few minutes? yeah this is nothing like magic but the other thing is that usually people don’t get that strong from magic. Theos was seen as a prodigy and Durza had the most broken curse besides Promethean flame. Other than that I feel as though humans could still reach superhuman capabilities in this world. It is shown that a normal human can become as strong as Minotaur. Imagine someone developed a fighting style based on the impact fist and just went to town on a village. What is gonna stop him? a gun? I don’t think so.

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Magius in 2020
#nomagiclivesmatter before getting incenerated by a magic council

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I know, it’s not. No matter how many school shooters there are, it dosen’t compare to the amount of damage one well-trained magic user could do. You even say so.

Just because we have a power imbalance here, doesn’t justify the huge gap between the weak and the strong there. Here, power is bound by popularity and money. There, people who somehow work themselves up without getting killed can literally destroy the world if they want to, and it’s not like normal people can stop them. Normal people here have very little “real” power, which means that every place will eventually be controlled by an elite group of extremely powerful magic users, as I discussed in my last post.

So, I’ve actually talked about this in my last post but, having that much power concentrated in a few people is not a good idea. While some are good, many have been shown to be, if not evil, then selfish, and use that power only for themselves. What good is a revolution if the king posses a sea curse, right?

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alabama/ medieval england

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You clearly don’t know greek lore or else you’d know that Chaos was the origin of everything. So it’s also the origin of all good in the world and this argument is dumb because it also empowers you by how good you are.

No, only certain seas

Oil does the same. Plastic does the same. Nuclear Bombs do even worse than magic pollution.

You need to realize that even the most catastrophic events shown in AA won’t beat a few nukes, and saying “Ohh but they’re regulated,” is dumb because AA has less curse users and insane wizards than people with the nuclear launch codes.

Except canonically threats don’t happen this often, threats are supposedly rare considering all metalworkers get a fully grown adult to take their place every time.

The world didn’t blow up, a few seas just got destroyed. (And they’re just a big island so a few nukes could do the same)

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I don’t think you can make anything permanent with magic unless you have a curse. We know that stuff like magical gold dissipates after a while, but for example, Judgement’s Isle from AA was made by a metal curse user yet persisted through time.

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Just gonna throw in some corrections here

While this may be true in Greek mythology, the Arcane lore doc explicitly states that:

The origin of magic is a malevolent and evil force known as Chaos, and varying amounts of it are spread all throughout the universe. This energy is somewhat sentient, can be manifested through evil thoughts, and is heavily attracted to pure evil beings.

So unless AO brings changes to the lore doc that makes the above not apply, the Arcane universe’s version of Chaos leans towards evil.

Now the above point is a bit more muddy given the introduction of the War Seas. As you pointed out, because of them, it’s possible that Durza’s attack didn’t damage the whole world and wipe out 80% of human life as the lore document said.

However, the lore document (and a book from AA) implies that the islands in the Seven Seas islands used to be joined into one bigger continent before Durza’s attack. While we don’t know how big it was, it’s safe to assume that it was rather substantial in size.

As a real life reference point, the explosion of Krakatoa was estimated to be equal to 200 megatons of TNT, 4 times bigger than the most powerful nuke detonated (Tsar Bomba at 50 megatons). Over 2/3 of the Krakatoa island (~30 km^2 of ~45 km^2 total) were wiped off the map from that explosion. But that amount of land is almost nothing, for comparison the smallest island of Hawaii is 115 km^2, far bigger than Krakatoa.

Tl;dr of the above: What I’m getting at is that you would need an enormous amount of power to split even a relatively small continent into various islands. So even if Durza’s attack didn’t damage the whole world anymore, it would still have been far more powerful than anything we have dished out yet.

and now I ask myself if that research was worth it

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If you check the official lore document, it proves my point. I’ll link it at the end.

Pretty sure turning the mainland into a bunch of islands is pretty major. This presumably affected the War Seas as well, seeing as they are islands.

I don’t see how that makes magic any better though?

There is a difference between weapons that need massive planning and money to create, vs some dude touching a cube and just deciding to do whatever he wants with it.

You guys keep throwing out the nuke argument, even though it’s completely different. Nukes, while extremely dangerous, are regulated, and kept in check with failsafes. This isn’t a government deciding with multiple people whether to launch or not, it’s one person capable of doing it anytime. It is much, much worse.

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can someone make resume of this for me ? i don’t really wanna read it, alreday got bored after 4 lines

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:frcryin:

Just realized like half of this is me making fun of @Dragon lmao

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was gonna read it but that just turned my peanut attention span off

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ItsHim
Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming.

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Are these threads supposed to be an argument? Because I thought it was pretty obvious that magic is MUCH worse for the world than if they didn’t have it - seeing as how the world was nearly completely destroyed twice, the sea and skies are full of magic energy pollution, creatures are being mutated by it, and an entire group of seas has warred over sea curses for hundreds of years

Also about the evil wizards being able to completely wipe out towns thing - this is more of a gameplay issue, in a real world with magic you’d have to assume there would always be guards and such, plus if you did this you’d get imprisoned for decades or executed, not just jailed for 10 minutes and released lol

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Just want to say that tech is not the only person that makes the entirety of the lore it’s probably more like vetex with tech’s help

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Ya that was on me, editing my reply

If it was strong enough to reach the other side of the planet it would’ve done much more than just split the 7 seas into islands and cause an extreme amount of magic pollution.

It doesn’t, it’s just pointing out that pollution will always happen in some form.

I don’t see why a government like AG wouldn’t be able to punish a curse user efficiently. Unless it’s some broken external curse they just need to shove him into the sea, the only reason Durza even got strong was because the One Shot Pirates and AG ignored him and I don’t think governments with magic would ignore someone who destroyed 80% of the Seven Sea’s population.

That one person touching the cube might become extremely powerful but it’s far from impossible to regulate. Like what the war seas did, major governments would search everywhere for these cubes and lock them up only to use them as weapons in wars, similar to controlling a nuke.

Though Vetex intended it to be worse for humanity so :man_shrugging:

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I made the entire lore doc, AA storyline, and AO storyline so far, tech helps with character/island backstories, themes, boss attack ideas, books, and helps/adds ideas for the storylines. Idk why so many people think tech wrote all of the lore and I’m just the coder :neutral_face:

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