It’s just occurred to me that both characters have the same problem: They are leading cursed peoples without sharing their curse. In Tess’s case, she decided she doesn’t want to share it. In Calia’s case, she supposedly decided she did want to share it, except she got a nicer version of the condition, without the downsides, instead. More like an upgrade than a curse, really.
Oh yeah, and both of them originally didn’t want to join their respective factions and then did a 180 on that offscreen. With some people on the forums eager to paper it over by saying they just changed over time, even though we didn’t see it.
Fans of both races are complaining about these characters for the very same reason: they don’t truly reflect the themes of the peoples they are supposed to be leading. And since the story of a people in WoW tends to appear through the leader of said people getting screentime, that means that the stories of the worgen and forsaken are going to be “advanced” through characters that don’t truly represent them.
And just to be clear, I think those complaints are 100% fair in both cases.
I’d like this 100 times if I could. I’ll take it a step further to say that there is a Forsaken character (Lillian) and a Worgen character (Darius) who do represent these races and their plights, and both were ignored for:
-A 20 year old who previously didn’t want to be queen
-The sister of f’ing Arthas
As much as I love Darius though and am sad he’s going to become a tertiary character they pull out when they don’t have anyone else, what happened with Lillian may be the biggest slap in the face I’ve ever seen in World of Warcraft lol.
I agree that there are better Forsaken candidates, but (speaking only for myself) I consider Lillian Voss to be only slightly better as a potential Forsaken leader than Calia Menethil. In the first place, I’m still salty that she stopped being neutral. In the second place, she had a complete personality transplant around the time of Legion/BfA. (ETA: Just realized, Tess has kind of had a personality transplant too, from what I hear, so that’s another thing they have in common. I’ll add that to the OP.)
I seem to be the only one on this forum who feels this way about Lillian, so again, I’m speaking only for myself. But I don’t think I’ll ever be reconciled with her suddenly becoming a Forsaken main character. I feel like she only got there over the heads of actual OG Forsaken because she’s the pet of some writer or other.
Anyone else notice that if Lillian speaks with another woman for more than a sentence, they immediately find themselves in a position of power and authority?
She pleaded with Calia to rule the Forsaken. Took a bit, but now Calia is Queen.
She made sure she was there to pep-talk Shandris and help her settle her doubts. Now Shandris rules the Kaldorei.
And she was there to support her fellow Uncrowned, Tess Greymane. Who is now Queen.
If the writers only knew what they had done, the conspiracy they’d created…
Nothing wrong with having an opinion my friend. I don’t even play a Forsaken. My thoughts are just that since she was raised in Cata as the new generation of undead, AND she was a holy person before this, she grew alongside players in having to deal with and understand what the Forsaken are. Particularly the Forsaken created after the Third War.
I don’t know much about her otherwise, but when I think about who among the Forsaken would be able to understand and represent them post-Slyvanas, she’s the first to come to my mind.
I do however play a Worgen. Don’t even get me started there lol.
She didn’t “grow alongside players,” though. She ran off to do her own thing, which was murdering necromancers with much cackling and extra-speshul purply magic zomg. She was a semi-insane wild card who worked freely with both sides (Scholomance) but whom you wanted to kind of tiptoe around. There wasn’t another character like her, and it was a loss to the game when someone in Legion went, “Hmm, we can’t have all Alliance rogues in the order hall. Well, this Lillian person is undead, so she’s Horde, right? Shove her in!”
And then apparently some dev picked her up as a new toy, because suddenly she shows up in BfA all sweet and nurturing and rational and absolutely nothing like the Lillian Voss we previously knew and … well, previously knew. No, I am not willing to do the work of assuming she just mellowed and matured offscreen when I wasn’t looking. And goshdarnit, I miss the mad free agent necromancer slaughterer. Even if she was sometimes a bit eye-rolly and borderline Mary Sueish in her speshulness (which makes me suspect she has been a favorite toy for two different devs).
Oh, feel free to rant. That’s kinda what this thread is for, or could be for.
Dang, I respect that a lot. Again forgive my ignorance, I won’t claim to be Forsaken expert but that makes perfect sense. I’d be pissed too if they outright changed a character like that. It seems like they needed a character to fill a role and changed her to fill that role. A couple times too haha that’s garbage.
I appreciate it my friend, but I already wrote a topic the size of a novel on this forum about what a silly decision the Worgen debacle was. Here’s my main point:
Essentially, there’s a character named Darius Crowley who fought against Genn during the second war (opposed building the Gilnean Wall) then teamed up to save Gilneas from the Worgen and effectively saved them by teaming up with the Nelfs. Tess made it very clear she was uninterested in becoming a queen. So what’s the decision here?
Well, throw Darius in the garbage and make Tess the queen, obviously.
Thanks. And I’d be pretty ticked off about the Tess thing, in your shoes. This might be a case where people on opposite factions can really understand each other’s pain.
Could be a slip-up, but someone at Blizzard thinks she’s queen.
I think Tess Greymane is a character that they’ve had no idea what to do with. I would argue that she had one personality transplant for Legion and another during BfA, and before all that she had no established personality at all.
In Legion Tess inexplicably became what was basically an expy of Arya Stark (which also was one of the original lore reasons why Anduin didn’t want to start an intimate relationship with her, because he heard that she had apparently become an assassin).
After Legion though, they seemingly completely 100% abandoned the idea of Tess being an assassin and a member of the Uncrowned at all and has since been about becoming the Queen of Gilneas.
I believe that the devs have even stated at one point that the Class Hall campaigns are not necessarily 100% canon, so it’s possible that her involvement in the Uncrowned is now non-canon.
I don’t know if they’re ever going to acknowledge how Tess Greymane was basically Arya Stark for an expansion, and I’m guessing the current writers prefer to forget that she was portrayed that way.
It’s also apparent that Tess as a member of the Uncrowned was an abandoned story thread as she was originally supposed to be more involved in the BfA faction war content. What I’m guessing probably happened with Tess was internal fighting between devs over the direction to take Tess, which led to Tess not really showing up in a major way again until the Worgen heritage questline.
Another character who had an extreme personality change was Jaina Proudmoore when it came to the Legion version of her character and the BfA version.
I won’t entertain any negative Tess threads for at least 6 months, simply out of experience, because all the Tess hate in the last few days strongly resembles “Gamergate was just about journalism, bro!” denial and dishonesty.
Remember, people, debate isn’t about facts or logic, it’s about hiding your true thoughts with dogwhistles and code. And the Tess hate? I’ve seen this before a hundred times, and let me tell you, it isn’t about her as a character… At least not right now.
Which is exactly why the reclaiming Gilneas questline should’ve involved her being infected and becoming one whether she wanted it or not. <----in her opinion.
As for Lillian’s personality transplant…don’t get me wrong, I love character development and her going from a strictly neutral “mwa-ha-ha death to all Scarlet Crusade/necromancers with my special purple death powers” to “therapist for new undead” would’ve been a lot more interesting if we’d actually been allowed to see/experience said character growth as it happened.
