A non-elf thread, but still controversial

I like Baine, I Like Jaina, and i Like Anduin… And i think they might be 3 of the best people in lore right now.

Before you get out the torches and pitchforks, or flag me into oblivion… lemme 'splain myself like Lucy.

  1. Jaina. She has always been a polarizing figure, from our earliest time with her, she was adamant about peace with the horde, at whatever cost… and… its not hard to see why. She grew up in the shadow of the second war, she saw what it did to her homeland, she lost her eldest brother, and she sad how hatred affected her father. Pre-theramore, while a little annoying at times, she was consistent, she wanted to end the cycle, she wanted peace. Post Theramore and you see alot of people hating her 180… but… it makes perfect sense.

She sacrificed so much, she killed her own father, all for the sake of peace, and Theramore, the people she loved… were not killed, they were erased the greif, the rage, she felt was not only natural, frankly it was justified. Her grudge lasted a long while, and again… thats… pretty normal when you see the scope of what she endured. BfA did her right, with the close to her story, her dealing with the guilt of her father, and finally coming to terms with Theramore. She will never again be the girl who wanted peace at all costs, but she is finally back to wanting to see the cycle broken.

  1. Baine, in alot of ways, i see Baine and Garroshs stories as mirrors to one another. Baine is what Garrosh -could- have been. When we first met him he was a hot head brave, out for centaur blood. WIth Caines death he was forced into a leadership position and the biggest pair of hooves you could ever hope to fill. Plus dealing with the stirrings of Garrosh starting down his very dark path, all while having to serve under the man who killed his father. But i think he did a great job.

Baine cares about the horde, but more then that, he cares about the Tauren, regardless of tribe. He sided with the rebels against Garrosh’s madness, he pushes for peace, he was disloyal to sylvie, because his people need someone like that. For the first time the Tauren have a home, they have a chance to thrive, and he wants that. Yes him admitting Camp T was a valid military target sounds pretty bad, but remember, the alliance did try (misguidedly) to let the civvies and children escape. Pushing for more war isn’t going to secure his peoples future. Peace is. He also has a strong moral center, in warcrimes he was charged with defending Garrosh, and everyone thought he would throw the case… and instead he did a good showing of trying to defend the man who killed his father, who he admitted filled his heart with rage… because it was what he was charged with. He freed Derek because he felt what was happening was monstrous… in a world filled with bitter hate, war, death, and real to goodness world ending monsters, he still holds a moral compass.

I’ll hold off Manduin for later however :eyes: don’t need people corpse camping me just yet.

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All very valid and fine points. Not sure why you’d get hate, but then again this is GD lol

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The hate for Jaina has kinda cooled off… but Baine and Anduin still get a percentage of the playbase foaming at the mouth :joy:

Honestly with all the elf threads, i figured it was time for something else, might as well stick up for 3 lore chars i like that i think don’t get a fair shake.

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Someone that only fights when it’s good for the Alliance even if it endangers his people? Remember that when Baine got busted out they fully expected Sylvanas to go after TB. That’s not something his people need.

The problem isn’t whether or not it was actually a military target. The problem is that the Alliance attacked the Tauren and he didn’t do anything about it. Even if it was entirely 100% military without even a single civilian, he still shouldn’t have just gone “meh, it happens, who wants some coffee?”

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I wanna see T’paartos make his glorious return.

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And he didn’t just brush it off, yes he accepted it, he admitted to him it was a valid military target. But it doesn’t mean he brushed it off.

Following Sylvie wasn’t good for his people either. He saw in Undercity exactly how she thought and was going to fight this war. When a monster is at the helm, you do everything you can to stop it.

I miss him :frowning_face: He made the LFD unlock quest so fun.

IMO these three characters catch flak because they aren’t grim/dark/edgy and don’t (intentionally) push the story in grim/dark/edgy directions. Since some time around the release of The Dark Knight, NA pop culture has had a strong obsession with grimdark edginess, painting anything else as “unrealistic” (ignoring the fact that in many situations, grimdarkness makes zero sense and is actually less realistic). In a sentence, they’re victims of a trend.

It’s a trend I’m sick of. The pendulum can swing back annnny minute now and I’d be incredibly pleased. Give me back some nice optimistic mid-90s-to-mid-00s style media.

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Anduin is the big lame. Give us another leader like Daelin or Varian.

Make Alliance Great Again.

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I sure wish I could like your posts but for reasons that make no sense Blizzard limits likes.

Honestly, i feel Anduin is heading in Varian’s direction.

We saw him trying to step into his fathers shoes and act like him… and fail miserably.

But it also seems clear he has started to learn his fathers meaning that peace while good, sometimes needs a mailed fist to enforce it. Right now inexperience is holding him back.

Curious to see how he is going to be going forward, maybe not shadowlands, but after.

If you have alts, you can switch to them to like more posts. The characters each have separate like counts per day or whatnot for some reason. Maybe to encourage my schizophrenia or nah something innocent probably.

Ok, so what did he do to counter it and push the Alliance back? What did he do to avenge the dead? Unless I’m missing something, all he did was build a wall and it was Garrosh’s subordinates that countered the Alliance’s push towards Mulgore (including defending the wall from their siege weapons) and avenged the dead.

If his problem was what he saw in UC, why didn’t he do anything until she raised Derek? For that matter, why did he not realize it before? She’s been doing terrible things since WC3.

I think it has to do with how the forum software is designed. Everything is tied to the character, including trust levels.

Those are three boring, one-note characters. Not unlike Sylvanas, the only difference is those are three “good” boring, one-note characters.

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Never said the writing always makes sense. Lor’thamar has been anti Sylvie for awhile, and didn’t raise a peep, Surafang going along with the war of thorns made no sense, the nightborn leader whos name i can’t remember just going along, ect… I’ve said it before, i’ll say it again. Pushing the Faction war requires people to go pants on head stupid to bury their head in the sand until its time for the big (not surprising) twist of we all work together again.

He was trying to take them out of the equation, Tauren were dying, he wanted to stop it, doing a sudden charge out of Mulgore into the barrens to push the alliance out was going to put them at a poor position. Mulgore is in a odd spot, with Orgammar and them separated by the Barrens, even with reinforcements from the crossroads, that was going to be alot of Tauren taking the brunt of the assault.

Yeah I do that occasionally. It’s still weird though. I get keeping people with lower “trust levels” from posting gifs and videos and such but limiting likes? That’s just pointless.

If that was his reasoning, why didn’t he defend the wall? The Alliance were getting ready to breach it until one of Garrosh’s commanders sent someone to destroy their siege weapons. A wall that you let the enemy breach doesn’t do anything to “take them out of the equation”.

For that matter, if he was thinking tactically, why bring up that it was a legitimate target at all? The tactics wouldn’t have been any better regardless if it was a military outpost or if it was a giant nursery.

Also, why didn’t he send any help to the survivors? If his concern was saving Tauren lives, why did he just leave them to die in the wilds?

I like Jaina and Baine too.

Curious to see your reasoning for Anduin though…

so… you like the 3 whiner characters…

different strokes for different folks. it’s not for me to judge.

The problem with Baine is that I think you’ve spent way more time thinking about how he leads his people than the writing team has. After the cata revamp of mulgore, Baine is seemingly absent for the Horde/Tauren player. He mainly only shows up to be basically Jaina and Anduin’s Horde Friend.

The writers really need to spend some time on him actually leading the Tauren and not just showing up to be reasonable horde leader or way to let the horde in on the real story that the Alliance gets like with Wrathion and Anduin.