Nah, I meant that I thought Blizzard was struggling to come up with an alliance Cata race at the time. Goblins were locked in as a rather obvious horde choice, but one of their earlier ideas was to potentially add a draconian race instead (this would later become the “dragonman” concept Maloriak uses in Blackwing Descent). There’s a chance the alliance could have ended up with a WoW version of Dragonborn instead.
A lot of the points in this thread more or less sum up into one big point; The Gilneans have nothing to call their own. No home, no major role, no unique identity, nothing.
I feel as if this could play a major role someday in the story, if the writers ever become cognizant of their neglect towards the Worgen. In a way, having nothing to call your own is a very strong, unique identity. I know that sounds weird, but can you imagine the boiling over someday?
The worgen, ironically enough, are the dogs of the Alliance. They have been relegated to serving, and that’s it. Their homes have been taken from them, twice. Their accommodations in Stormwind? Pathetic. The Gilnean Flag is now the Stormwind Crest? Their nationalism is gone.
I truly, truly truly hope that the Worgen become reclusive once again, and make the Alliance realize their worth. Joining the Alliance was an act out of desperation, but now, it has only hurt them; they’d be better off cleansing Gilneas, rebuilding their walls and shutting themselves off once again.
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You know this is a really good point! And one thing I am predicting in Shadowlands is that Genn will die, what if this lights a fire in Tess Greymane? She sees that with Genn gone she has to rule so she steps up and is like, “You know? I am tired of my people being homeless with nothing to call their own!” And she rallies the Gilneans and with Lorna and her father they retake Gilneas and resettle.
It would be cool to see the Night Elves help with this as well since the Gilneans helped them reclaim Darkshore, continue to show that unity between the two.
What’s funny is you are kind of right. The Night Elves saved the Gilneans, to which they are eternally grateful, but since joining the Alliance they have gained nothing. What has the Alliance, besides the Night Elves sheltering them, done to help the Gilneans? Nothing. Like you said, they would almost be better off breaking off from the Alliance again and just staying as allies with the Night Elves.
Having said that, Blizzard won’t do that from a meta perspective, but from a lore perspective Genn learned his lesson leaving the Alliance last time and admits to regretting it. So he likely wouldn’t do it again.
cries in gilnean
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I would love to see a rebuilt Gilneas with its factories and towering smokestacks. They are the most technologically advanced human kingdom by far, so it be interesting to contrast their technological know how against say, the Maghar. Sort of like how goblins and gnomes do.
As much as I like Gilneas, I’m more disappointed in how little attention the infectious nature of the curse got, lots of dangling threads, some races can be turned, some cannot, Worgen fight with both teeth and claws yet none of the Horde races ever got turned, no one started a very plausible biological warfare by dropping infected blood in drinking water, you know, normal people things.
Their story took a nosedive the moment they made it a Night Elf curse instead of sticking to their original idea of interdimensional space monsters, and Night Elves have a nasty habit of swallowing anything orbiting them. For this same reason I think Goldrinn needs to go, it’s also silly to have them worshipping a Nelf god considering they were light worshippers to begin with.
They’ve got some gunpowder and alchemy going for them, which Dwarves and Forsaken already do better. I would’ve liked for them to have enough agency to at least handle their own cure, follow through with Krennan’s potion and make it a limited resource, a recurrent plot point that could put them at odds with their own faction from time to time. Atm there’s no downside to being a Worgen at all.
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Agreed, it would be nice if we got more info on how infectious the curse it is. As it is now we don’t know if those who do the ritual can still spread the curse through biting. Silverpine Forest questline seems to imply they cannot as Crowley is only able to turn the nobles by giving them his blood.
So is it like non-ritual worgen = spread through bite
ritual worgen = spread through giving blood?
And I actually much prefer the Night Elves being related to the curse versus worgen being some weird space dimensional creatures. I think the issue is they made the Night Elves “solve” the Worgen curse. Which brings me to my next point.
I absoultely love this. One of the reasons I loved the starting zone with Krennan’s potion was that it was a temporary solution and Godfrey even says so, and then mentions that if you even show signs of going feral again he will personally shoot you. That was dark and cool! It gave a sense of urgency and importance to fighting the beast within.
Like you said, I really wish they continued with that instead of having the Night Elves solve the issue “permanently”, as we see in Wolfheart it isn’t permanent and worgen are still kind of animalistic.
Honestly I loved Duskwood in Cata too because the Gilneans went there to try to help those worgen by coming up with their own salve to mimic the ritual. That was awesome! I wish the Gilnean worgen followed that same route and had a constant theme of having to use a potion to keep their worgen side under control, and maybe make it so that Krennan’s potion enabled us to return to our Human form, but after that we have to continue taking potions to keep ourselves from going feral again.
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It’s not exactly hard proof of anything, but I think the fact that Tess tries to pressure the worgen player character into biting her should be at least soft-proof that it’s still transmittable.
I remember asking about the range of its infection in a worgen lore thread a while back, because I thought it’d make sense for trolls to be infectable. After all, they should be much more compatible than humans are but the disease is able to be at least that flexible. But it’s at best, a lore-by-omission issue where worgen can be found on three major continents and the only people you ever hear about being infected are night elves and humans.
Also Dahar totally stole my idea of poisoning a town’s drinking supply with worgen blood. You idea thief. Alternate variations could involve spitting in someone’s food or dabbing a blowdart in saliva and shooting it from a distance.
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I came up with it first! Do not make me go back there to search it. 
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Tess actually doesn’t ask you to bite her she just says give her the curse or something along those lines. So that could mean just give her blood.
And yeah it is weird that only Night Elves and Humans are able to get the curse… you would think at least Trolls can be infected, but I don’t know man. It’s definitely something Blizzard has just glossed over and ignored, but like that one user said Worgen are on three continents and no other race besides Humans or Night Elves have been turned.
Actually that isn’t true, I believe there is a Vrykul worgen in Northrend because he is huge, BUT I don’t believe he was a true worgen, he was one of Arugal’s minions so he likely had one of his shackles on that turns people into worgen, he likely wasn’t bitten and given the curse.
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I headcanon that Vulpera are Gnomes affected by the Worgen curse, like that one Gnome in Stonetalon wanted.
It would also explain why we weren’t able to find the Sand Gnomes.
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are you trying to say the vulperans are just sand gnomes infected with the worgen curse?
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I believe that was the implication Head pats for the good puppers
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yay headpats!
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Stalvan Mistmantle was implied to be a child molester. I doubt they will re-explore themes like that again anytime soon, though.
They did do some subtle nods to Jack the Ripper in Gilneas with all of the Worgen posters with the claw rips on them, though, as well as Worgen brutally murdering people in the streets. They just did the nods to Jack the Ripper without the murdered sex workers.
There’s probably no reason they can’t do more Jack the Ripper type stuff without the more touchy subjects attached to the theme.
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i think they had a murderer in the comic, called the starlight slasher who murders a woman (later revealed to be wolf cult initiates)
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That was a good comic too. Shame I don’t have it anymore
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yeah. shame halford ramsay never shows up again. i wonder if he is still alive
I really wish we got an NPC for him in-game the way Mardigan from the Dark Riders comic got added in-game. I also wish that Alpha Prime was in-game and we actually got to see him in the starting zone since he was such a huge reason for everything that happened in Gilneas.
We got Ivar instead, he was the one who led the packs assault on gilneas instead. So I say it was a fair trade off
throws a worgen tail at dard