Would expect goblins to embody a lot of lawyer energy, especially along the lines of abusing or twisting it to their benefit. I feel like the cartels already do a lot of that as is.
1 Like
Now I’m imagining a legal drama between the ‘honourbound’ orcish defense lawyer and the unscrupulous goblin prosecutor.
Either that or Ace Attorney.
5 Likes
I cannot wait until Blizzard finally, definitively puts the “Calia as Forsaken Queen” theory to bed. Calia is dangerously close to Teldrassil’s “how many times can we argue the same points for five years in a row” territory. Neither side listens to the other, they have fundamentally different ideas of what the Forsaken are and should be, and only one side results in Forsaken being something other than humans with a skin-condition.
The pro-Calia people do not listen to any counter argument, and the anti-Calia people are brow-beaten by Blizzard’s usually terrible decision making into thinking “well I don’t like it, but maybe they’ll at least do something interesting with Calia as the leader of the Forsaken, maybe they won’t just have her be a bland, milquetoast peacenik like Anduin?” And then Blizzard goes and makes her into yet another bland milquetoast Anduin-clone.
The only Calia I will accept as leader of the Forsaken is the light-zealot “benevolent” fascist queen that we depose in the expansion after Dragonflight.
9 Likes
I think Calia is akin to Nelves in that they somehow managed to not anticipate how resistant/hostile players would be. Also seems clear that SL involved a massive derailment to what they had intended with her, so who knows where they’ll run with her now?
My fear is that there’s some contrived moment that is going to give her an edgy makeover that lands her Sylv’s old office. My hope is that her story interacts with the Forsaken without subsuming their identity or presence.
8 Likes
OBJECTION!
I am not enthused about Calia, but it feels a bit bad to give the Forsaken another leader that will go evil and needs to be taken out. It happened to the whole Horde twice and the Forsaken specifically, when they were already so tied to Sylvanas.
Maybe the Alliance attacks Forsaken civilians sailing from Orgrimmar to their homeland in Lordaeron, and Calia turns into a raging angry leader. Maybe Derek is leading the fleet, and he gets lost at sea after the Alliance attack - pissing off Calia and Jaina, who direct their ire at the Alliance command.
The Alliance can use a turn at the villain stage. This would be one way to build it up. Tragic as it may be for those we would lose at sea - RIP
2 Likes
Seriously I’m replaying the Priest Hall right now and I’m amused by Calia because she’ll say;
“I once hid in a muddy ditch for two days while slavering ghouls patrolled the area. Your prattle does not faze me”
Which is indeed a harrowing experience to survive. But it’s a weird thing to say with Alonsos Faol standing right there, and even weirder to say to a Forsaken Priest, as their reaction would probably be;
8 Likes
Shoot! The one place I didn’t look. Ha… ya got me. Ya got me good Calia. Well played.
2 Likes
I think the point of her comment was to show how much she fought to remain alive, and how much she lost in the process of doing so. Living with that broke her mentally. Alonsus Faol an undead, helped bring her back from the abyss. Later she would become undead herself, but her sentiments remained true to her commitment to her people whether living and undead. Let’s prattle on to her amusement… 
3 Likes
“Your honor I would like to challenge the witness to single combat”
“Objection! Cause for speculation”
“Overruled. Pick your weapons gentlemen”
My fear? They’re just going to toss her into the leadership role and the entirety of the story will be her graciously accepting and promising to help lead the Forsaken on a better path, with a few comments like, “She’s such a wise and benevolent leader!” and “We’re so glad to have her!”
And that’ll be the end of it.
We’ll return from Dragon Isles and she’ll just be another Horde racial leader and we’ll just move on with it.
13 Likes
That’s what I’m most expecting to happen. I said before that there cannot be a satisfying ending to this tangled mess of stupidity.
Everything about this story from BtS to the Sylvanas novel has been a complete trainwreck. Sure BFA and SL had their moments, and I quite liked SR, but overall the main storyline has managed to somehow be both completely confusing and completely boring.
Calia is inextricably part of that same narrative. It is beyond me how anyone can conceivably think this is going to end well when nothing else about it has.
Honestly if they just fixed Tirisfal by making the BFA version inaccessible and the only change to the Cata version was Voss and Calia standing in the Royal Quarter now, I’d consider it a win.
Because I genuinely don’t want stories from this team involving anything I care about. We saw how they handled Sylvanas, Elune, Teldrassil, Zovaal, etc. So them touching stuff as little as possible is preferable in my book at this point.
11 Likes
I don’t think it will be flawless, or go well: that is simply not a realistic expectation. Even in the best of situations, the fanbase all wants different things and so no matter what there will be players unhappy. The story of the Forsaken has been so mismanaged and narrow in scope beyond throwing blight for Sylvanas for so long that they really failed to develop depth and content beyond using the forsaken as quick and easy blight throwing bad guys for many years. NEvermind the origin story of the Forsaken and the Fall Of Lordareon.
Calia should have been given more content. She should have been developed and given a stronger narrative and a better presence than what we have. However, it is really obvious that her content as well as the content of many other characters ended up scrapped with content like Shadowlands being cut short.
That said, the narrative and writing team now is different from that of before.
A lot of this mess is under the reign of Alex Afrasiabi as creative director. He was fired June 2020. That said, this guys creative direction was a total mess. We have former Blizzard employees talking about how he intentionally ruined characters and content over petty grudges: including Sylvanas.
There is ample talk from various off-the-record sources on how he would intentionally shoot down content that didn’t make his pet project look good, play sexist games in the work force, and when he left there was no creative direction really to work from. What I have seen off the record in spaces like Twitter from off the record former and current employees, is that he was walked out leaving a total mess and they were just trying to wrap it up as best they could.
With him gone now, I have hope for better writing and changes. The man was crazy toxic, and descrutive.
Alex Afrasiabi WoW Career Credits
- World of Warcraft (2004) - Quest Designer
- World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (2007) - Lead Quest Designer
- World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (2008) - Lead World Designer
- World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor (2014) - Creative Director
- World of Warcraft: Legion (2016) - Creative Director
- Fired June 2020, sexual harassment going back to 2013.
- Source: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alex_Afrasiabi
2 Likes
As for Tirisfal Glades, I want back OG (van/BC) Brill but with Forsaken flavor. The stuff that was implemented is little more than wacky looking and sucks on many separate levels. Everything from game play navigation, to venues for rp, the buildings are a pain to play with. I still can’t get over who approved that Zepplin tower in Northrend at Venance Landing that is almost impossible to simply run up or down on while mounted without falling off of. A lot of these buildings are 100% style, with horrible functionality.
Clean effective navigation of buildings central to game play. I’d love to see buildings and content developed that leans into the style of the undead, while still preserving function.
3 Likes
The basis of the Forsaken is:
- US Southern Gothic
- Victorian Penny Dreadfuls (which includes tour classical monsters, eg Frankenstein, Dracula)
- 20th/21st century Zombies Horror
- Traditional Horror Folklore (eg Banshees)
- Disney Villain Comedic Horror
Whatever Calia becomes cannot undermine nor contradict these core points
7 Likes
… I assume that you didn’t mean to imply that you actually cared about Zovaal, did you?
Ultimately, the fact that we couldn’t bring ourselves to care about him is one of Shadowlands’ greatest failings. Sad, when you think about it. Say, maybe if we’d been told his motivation right away at the beginning, instead of saving it for his literal dying words, we might have! Oh well!..
…?
The basis of the Forsken is the fall of Lordaeron in the Scourging. Lordaeron was a traditional human Kingdom. It was only in later xpac content that we see more of the wacky injections of Disney Villain content.
That said, I def would love to see the Forsaken stay with a dark gothic horror aspect and lean into the story of being a cursed fall kingdom of the undead. There is lots of great potential to stick with the more gothic horror and dark folklore aspects.
5 Likes
I absolutely agree that guy is a bag of infected horse ish, and I hope he gets what he deserves.
But far as I can tell he is not responsible for Before The Storm, or most of BFA, or Shadowlands or the Sylvanas novel. That’s quite a lot of content he had little to nothing to do with.
The Zovaal was an abject embarrassment. The architect behind all cosmic suffering, the true arch devil of the Warcraft universe, and he was a juiced up crash test dummy with a personality to match.
Then the Sylvanas novel gave us a completely bewildering story where the Banshee Queen decides to go for a genocide high score in service of the aforementioned Dull Devil. And her rationale was a sad lava evil and Zovaal correctly predicting several events he orchestrated.
Seriously the Child of Blood prophecy was insane. He didn’t even send a Belf. Just a Dreadlord poorly disguised as one. And this revelation that Zovaal is also behind the Burning Legion, and therefore definitely influenced the events he ‘foresaw’ is not where Sylvanas reevaluates the situation. But instead where she doubles down on being a mass murdering girl boss, because she just doesn’t allow herself to doubt.
“For a moment, old patterns of thinking intruded upon her. Fury, at the thought that the Burning Legion, who had destroyed so many worlds, who had targeted and been rebuffed by Azeroth’s denizens so many times, was the Jailor’s instrument
No, she reminded herself. We are on the same side now. That is nothing compared to what we will achieve together”
The super secret reason Sylvanas aligned herself with the devil is because she deliberately cast aside her critical thinking skills all because she really wanted to see her brother again, and a sad lava eel suggested that probably wouldn’t happen.
Yeah. Not hopeful for any future stories.
5 Likes
Examples, please? Though the idea of the Forsaken acting like stereotypical upper-class Southerners does tickle my funny bone. Or even lower-class Southerners- (cocks shotgun “Damn livin’! Git off mah lawn!”)
Alex Afrasiabi was the creative director from 2014 until June 2020.
Xpac Timeline:
- Warlords Of Draenor (2014)
- Legion (2016)
- Battle For Azeroth (2018)
- Shadowlands (2020)
- Source: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Alex_Afrasiabi
Content and xpacs take years of work and planning in advance. Books take extensive time to plan, write, edit, and approve.
He was a horrible writer and trash creative lead who was toxic, and self inserted himself into the game as a part of his narcissistic ego trips tied to his abuse of power.
The current staff are left cleaning up the mess, and that takes time.
3 Likes