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I don’t honestly remember any of this at all. 
Yes, they do, except when they don’t, but do remember that they used to feel pain but they didn’t, and they will still feel pain in the future unless they don’t.
That’s how things work with blizzard’s writing. As you said, “how the Light works has been retconned about 50 times now”. Considering that premise, it is useless to think about the lore. Things will work the way the writers find it convenient today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, etc.
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="84" height="84"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg> "Rhielle"){kind=small}
It was definitely a thing. It was even covered in some of the WoW novels.
The constant retcons and inconsistent writing is precisely why I stopped caring about the lore. Sad to see the OG Blizzard team’s lore get trashed by the newbies.
Some types of Undead react badly to the Light. The Forsaken are mostly filled with these types.
That said, Val’kyr and whatever Calia Menethil is work perfectly fine with the Light.
It was? I’ve read all of the novels. I don’t remember that. Hmm.
With the obliteration of the old forums we now have to work much harder to find Blue post sources, but on the EU forums (according to WoWPedia), one blue had this to say:
The souls of the undead (Forsaken, PC death knights, ghouls, etc.) are imperfectly attached to their bodies; the dark magic that sustains them is a buffer that prevents their souls from properly joining with their bodies. This is why undead feel only faint sensations of pain or discomfort from most physical stimuli, and why the Light is so painful to their existence. The primary exception to this rule are liches, as liches bind their souls to a phylactery and then use the phylactery to generate a physical form; this process is why lich bodies look nothing like their mortal bodies, and also why you have to destroy a lich’s phylactery to truly kill them.
During “Ask CDev Round 2” (Ask creative developers) we find:
When undead use or are healed by the Holy Light, does it cause them any actual damage or harm, or does it only cause them pain (in addition to the intended effects of the spell)?
Channeling the Light in any way, or receiving healing from the Light, only causes pain. Forsaken priests do not disintegrate or explode from channeling the Light for an extended period of time… though they may wish they would.
and
Are there long-term effects on an undead who is in regular contact with the Holy Light in a positive way?
It is difficult to say, as there are no known records of undead wielding the Holy Light before the Third War. There are reports, however, that some Forsaken have slowly experienced a sharpening of their dulled senses of touch, smell, etc., as well as an increase in the flashes of positive emotions that have otherwise become so rare since their fall into undeath. Unfortunately, this may be the cause of the Forsaken priesthood’s increased attempts at self-destruction; regaining these senses would force the priests to smell their own rotting flesh, taste the decay in their mouths and throats, and even feel the maggots burrowing within their bodies.
Not from a book, of course, but as far as I know it’s considered cannon until retconned. “Before The Storm” downplays this and makes it seem like the light is “uncomfortable” but not really a big deal.
Sources:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Ask_CDev#Ask_CDev_Answers_-_Round_2
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Forsaken#Nature_of_undeath
Thanks! 
You’re welcome! I know I like it when there’s a source; it can be helpful to read the original material.
I love when I see people complain about “retcons” because more often than not it just shows that the person never actually understood the lore in the first place.
Because she was resurrected by the Light unliked most of the Undead who are resurrected by necromancy
(Something that a lot of people dont seem to understand btw…)
I am not complaining, I am asking for the current lore. Maybe instead of being snarky you could instead enlighten the group.
Well, that really depends on what they’re talking about. There are a few kinds of lore changes and they all operate differently.
- Expanding on a topic and revealing new information without changing the old information. This is obviously not a retcon, though if you don’t understand the lore it can appear to be one until you know better.
- For example, Moira Thaurissan, in Chronicles 3. Previously she was just sitting about doing nothing; or so we thought. Turns out she was engineering a whole situation down there that led to her being a respected leader. This wasn’t how it played out when we first did this content, but it doesn’t really change the story; it just expands on it and fills in details we didn’t know were missing.
- Molten Core? She needed Ragnaros gone and played up the situation so that we’d do the revolting for her. Blackhand? More engineering by Moira, though we’d probably have gotten around to it without her, she “helped” by spreading rumors and trusting that we’d show up to take care of her problems.
- Clarifying the involvement of off-screen characters after the fact. This one can seem like a retcon if you were previously under the belief that a character was doing one thing but they were never said to be doing it.
- Chronicles 3, again, shows us that N’zoth was basically entirely behind Deathwing’s return in Cataclysm. Due to Cho’gall (whose story was expanded, as well as clarified) mucking about with C’thun and Yogg Saron, N’zoth would make his move to begin events. None of this was even really mentioned during Cataclysm, and N’zoth wasn’t anywhere to be seen; he was off screen doing stuff that we’re now finding out.
- Simply not referencing known events can also seem like a retcon. Don’t be convinced, though, because sometimes it just doesn’t need saying.
- For example in Chronicles 3 they don’t touch on Maiev allowing Tyrande to be swept downstream, nor do they discuss her behavior in Wolfheart. This isn’t a retcon, though, because they didn’t say she didn’t do those things. They just never touched on those things at all. They didn’t alter those events.
For something to be a retcon it must directly contradict the lore in such a way that it can’t be an expansion, omission, or clarification.
A good example of, an overblown, retcon is the Draenei situation. The Eredar were originally stated to be the race that corrupted Sargeras. Then the Draenei become a playable race and we discover that it was Sargeras and his Burning Legion who corrupted the Draenei. It’s a minor quibble, it was all of a few sentences in the RTS games manual, but it was very much a retcon.
The retcon here isn’t that Draenei exist, the lore never mentioned whether there were or were not rebel Eredar who weren’t evil. That could just be an expansion or clarification. The retcon is who corrupted who; it can only be one way and it clearly went from left to right.
Unless the lore expressly states that “this happened this way” and then later changes, it might not be a retcon. Calia Menethil is a tricky argument, for example, because we’ve never seen a Light undead before but it was never stated that they couldn’t be made. We knew the Light burned the undead something fierce, but it was also clear that it was because they were dark abominations. Sort of a loophole to the whole thing, really, is Calia being undead without being “dark” magic.
Examples of genuine retcons:
- The shift of corruption between Sargeras and the Eredar/Draenei race.
- Blood Elves still living on Azeroth. (It was made clear that Kael’thas brought his remaining people to Outlands to escape Garithos in a mission in WC3)
- Chen Stormstouts birthplace. In “The Founding of Durotar” he claims to be from Pandaria; in MoP he claims to be from the Wandering Isle and has never set foot on Pandaria until MoP.
- Arthas’ mercenaries species. In WC3 they were ogres and ice trolls, and expressly not human. In Halls of Reflection and the Death Knight manga they’re represented as humans which doesn’t fit.
Is that true?
Damn, how can you even play forsaken, OP?
Yeah…this.
She was resurrected by the light but people always glaze over WHO had a hand in helping. Alonsus Foal, a forsaken priest who is able to wield MASSIVE amounts of holy energies.
Things evolve over time. Maybe it’s not so much as a ret con but more than the forsaken are evolving/changing?
I guess they gain some resistance the more they get exposed to the Light
Anything that creates Undeath is necromancy.
Calia was created with Necromancy just as any other Undead. But that Necromancy was also Holy Magic.
Magic can be more than one thing at once.
It’s been a few months since I read the book, but wasn’t it Necromancy + Holy magic together that brought her back as a Holy Undead?
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