If they were heeding their own story, Orgrimmar would have been a ghost city with the amount of orcs, trolls, and tauren lost to MoP, Legion, and BFA. But populations and consequences are both set by writer whim without regard to much of anything, really.
Sylvanas in a pre-Shadowlands alternate reality where she saves the world from the Burning Legion by using the power of the Lantern to create Scourge 2.
The thing with his son? It seemed a bit of a cliff hanger. Showed him being distract at the concept, and that was last scene. Felt it could go either way…
There is a lot to unpackage in this thread, but I wanted to make sure that I came in here to also extend my support to Calia, in that I’m a Forsaken main, I love the Forsaken lore, and though I can also agree that her characterization up to this point (and costume) leaves a lot lacking, and given the scope of what we want and what we used to have, it’s going to take a lot to actually make ends meet. Despite the flaws, I believe that Calia belongs among the Forsaken, that the difference in her undeath is key to exploring other forms of undeath (for there are many), and that she has a lot of room to grow in order to better address what we, the players, want to see.
It’s important to note that a lot of the things surfaced on her story during a time where things were already convoluted story wise, and I do suspect that there was more planned, which was left behind, forgotten, or redacted because of complications within the company. Keep in mind, the rightful Queen of Stormwind was killed because someone threw a rock at her head. Depictions of strong female characters has not been Blizzard’s strong suit, and given the change in upper management and the Return to Lordaeron questline, I think that there is a lot of hope for good.
I don’t blame those who dislike Calia because of poor writing. I don’t blame those who are uncomfortable with the way things are depicted. I haven’t been happy with the way that Forsaken have been treated as empty, cartoonishly evil bad guys, when the full scope of their pain, misery, and reasons for becoming so warped have been all but forgotten. It’s typical that I will meet new players who start the game, who have literally no idea that the original Forsaken were from Lordaeron, and if they choose to skip quest options, they end up carrying on to have no idea who this person was in life, if they ever had a life before.
For better or for worse, we have Calia. I love her, flaws and all. She humanizes the Forsaken. She makes it clear where we came from, and what and who we were before all of this. She is NOT Alliance, and those saying, “well why didn’t she help them,” probably haven’t pondered on how the writers probably didn’t think it was worth their attention at the time, so that’s not actually Calia’s fault but poor demonstration of concept, it’s hardly even the fault of many writers because they’ve had other areas to cover, or they’ve been stuck on trying to save things through Shadowlands (among other things in previous expansions), and if you’re going to go at it from an IC perspective, most living humans don’t linger in Lordaeron and remain living for long. Her (very brief and butchered) story was that she fled during the Scourging of Lordaeron, nearly lost her life in the process, thought her entire family dead, eventually reunited with Alonsus, and surely had to live life as a commoner and refuge for many years as she sought her bearings and figured out what even could be done. When the opportunity and timing was right, she met with her people - and died.
She is not Alliance. She is not Horde. She is Lordaeronian. And thus, she is Forsaken, and her loyalty was and is to her people, in life, and in death. Though Sylvanas did have a love (abusive at worst, utilitarian at best) for the Forsaken, regardless of how she really felt, she ultimately did mistreat them, and as a Forsaken main, I’ve known for years that we were hardly more than weapons, a war machine. In many ways, that was even a fun story angle to explore, but not when the point of tragedy in a victim becoming a monster is lost. We should not be written as crazy murder hoboes that want to kill all life. Forsaken are crafty, conniving, backstabbing, and so much more. Some of them are even good, mean well, and have all of the characterized divisions that a person would have, with the recurring limitation of, “difficulty experiencing positive emotions.”
I’m not proud of how the Forsaken have been treated, narratively speaking. I’m not glad that Calia’s story has been so hollow, and empty, as if she’s worn by a dress, rather than the other way around. I had a lot of hope, and have been disappointed for a long time. The quest chain for Return to Lordaeron wasn’t perfect, but it was really, really good in my eyes.
TL;DR Calia deserves acceptance, even if people want to ICly reject her. She is Lordaeronian, and the rightful Queen. Poor writing in the character’s reveal and exposition is not the fault of the character, and I sincerely believe we are better off giving her a real chance to develop.
And before anyone jumps in and says it, “humanizing,” Forsaken is not about turning them into humans. They are quite different, but they are still a people, and have thoughts, feelings, plans, hopes, and fears. Humanizing them allows us to better explore what happened to them, why they are the way they are, and how they might grow so that they can be more than just angry Blight throwers. Let’s not fix them, or make them perfect and soft. A character who is otherwise gentle, kind, but indisputably suffering as they struggle to return home and ponder everything they’ve lost is still edgy, still grim dark, and still valid Forsaken story.
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I can’t believe people still bring this point up when it’s clear that the quest in Aszuna isn’t canon.
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This is why I’m a huge fan of PTR encryption and I hope Blizzard does it more and more and more for ALL story content no matter the scale. The number of people who still reference events from a PTR that NEVER MADE IT TO LIVE is too daggum high.
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1000000000000000000000000000% agree. It is staggering how much PTR stuff that NEVER goes live is -still- referenced. I really enjoyed how this content rolled out, and its been a BLAST to rp.
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It wasn’t from the PTR. It was a panel they showed at a Blizzcon.
What was specifically?
I’m curious, link for better context?
Ion Hazzikostas at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnX7yrbyRSo&t=54m50s :
- So, after we started thinking about and talking the Broken Isles we figured, alright, you're going to start off in the city of Dalaran which is kind of your flying fortress, your base from which you mount your assault on the Legion, and then you'll work your way clockwise around the zones, culimating in Suramar, maybe getting two, two and half levels each step of the way so you'll probably hit 110, you know, kind of late into Highmountain maybe Suramar [I think he meant Stormheim, given the slide]... We started building the expansion with this in mind and this direction.
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Thank you so much for this.
That makes it even weirder that people latched onto it so very hard.
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Wait… the once-King of Gilneas had probable cause to interfere in a conflict involving Sylvanas and her personal entourage with a Titanic afterlife subverter… by whose authority?
I think as she is now she would work well as the straight man to the Forsaken’s gallows humor, gore as slapstick shtick. While also functioning as the Forsaken’s ambassador for whenever they’re working with the Alliance or other goody two shoes factions.
Anything more than that though and they’re going to have to change her up a bit. She really could not look more out of place. I was actually kinda hoping she’d get briefly stuck in the Blight and get a bit of a make over.
Don’t get me wrong I like that old Prophecy set as much as the next Priest but one does not where white to the Undercity. Beyond looking like a fashion disaster you just know it’s going to be completely ruined with fluid and goo stains within the hour.
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Not to derail the current discussion, but how about that end cinematic between Voss and Calia in the patch?
Myself and various others walked away from it with an appreciation for the lore, dialog, and also really happy with the quality of the animation with the cinamtics. Its was great to see Voss in her full horrific glory well animated and talking. While we had seen Calia animated before in higher quality cinematics, I was delighted to see Voss given personal attention with the quality of her animation.
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She’s like a glowing lightbulb in a dark room. I really want to see a more ruthless side to her or a darker makeover before I think she’ll fit in and not stand out so much. I like the idea of using her as the ambassador to the alliance but worry blizzard writers wont use her as a “front man” and will forget and then think that is just how the rest of the forsaken are.
That’s a concern but I really think peoole are understating how difficult to impossible it’d be to make the Forsaken wholesome and friendly.
Baine gets brought up a lot as he seems to get more screentime with Anduin than Horde characters. But the Tauren were always the peaceful Horde faction. Seriously I don’t recall Cairne being some brutal warlord, they were always the Horde’s sober, chill friend.
The Forsaken are on the opposite side of that spectrum. Their stock building models have skulls ramed through iron spikes and alchemical viles with brain matter in them. They’re stock fairwells are about darkness and trust issues. They ride horned skeletal warhorses and fly on gigantic vampire bats. Their military is supplemented with Frankensteins and death fog artillery. Oh and one small thing they eat people.
The prospect of Calia being their only representative sounds if anything hilarious. It’d be like Glenda the Goodwitch trying to say she means no harm while flanked by an army of cenobites.
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The thing that should be noted is that the Stormheim finale isn’t the issue for Genn. Attacking Sylvanas for clearly trying to subvert one of the Val’kyr isn’t really a bad decision.
The problem is the Stormheim opening.
Before there is any indication that Sylvanas or the Horde are doing anything Genn attacks with full intent to kill, which pushes Forsaken and Worgen forces effectively out of the Legion conflict for the rest of the expansion.
Even if the shady letter were a canon source to chase her (it still isn’t), it still wouldn’t give justification to attack before her forces even arrive.
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There’s a separate thread about it, although it hasn’t been bumped in a few days:
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