I saw this on Wowhead last night but apparently the Forsaken now refer to Calia as “The Pallid Lady” and Derek Proudmoore is now her champion.
Isn’t that the exact opposite of what people wanted with Sylvanas’ departure? No more “Dark Lady” as a religious figurehead?
The Forsaken have a major problem with idolization, and leader worship. Apparently Blizzard took this opportunity to literally replace Sylvanas with a person Sylvanas fans resented.
I have no idea what Blizzard is planning with this but it just makes me livid because of clear double standards.
No Dark Lady, but the fandom will accept The Pallid (which means sickly) Lady as an acceptible alternative?
And Alliance shill Derek Proudmoore in the role as Nathanos 2.0?
I accept that Blizzard felt caged with Sylvanas, trapped in a story they didn’t write. The Sylvanas novel was a mess. The writing was plagarized from other WoW books, her characterization for Sylvanas stolen from Alleria characterization and she’s been written out essentially. So now they are going to take her one good story fans were actually interested in and give it to Calia because she’s easier for Golden (an Arthas and Jaina fangirl) to self insert into?
The writing of this game has really jumped the shark.
If Golden can’t write Sylvanas then they should give this character to someone who can write her. I knew Robert Brooks departure from Blizzard was bad news, for Sylvanas and Anduin fans especially, but it seems like a nail in the coffin now.
I think they started with Bright Lady, but then remembered Golden used that title for Jaina (someone reminded me of this on Twitter) and having both Jaina and Calia be the same title is uh
Zero desire to unpack that
Then they prolly moved to White Lady but then realized that it is 1) lmao and 2) Elune’s title
So they went to Pallid which I suspect is a vague Poe reference (“Pallid bust of Pallas upon the chamber door” from The Raven) and also an attempt to mitigate our claims of her being Perfect Porcelain™ as Golden described her by having the game affirm she is instead Pallid/sickly as a corpse.
Imho they really should’ve either
had Dominated Anduin turn her into a Banshee to give the boy some meaningful trauma and/or
had Sindane or the Primus teach her necromancy with a makeover and/or
remembered she is a Disc priest and had her have a shadow form for battle
Thus we could’ve had spicier titles like The Second Banshee Queen, maybe Banshee Duchess, maybe Lich Queen
But I will say they should change it to Bright Lady imho
Because of the juxtaposition with Dark and being a reference to Galadriel’s rant when she was tempted by Frodo’s offer
But yes they’ve written themselves into a corner on multiple fronts and only a hard retcon/reset or extreme fast forward can really salvage it
Golden has WAY too much reach in this story and she’s ruining World of Warcraft with her self inserts. Metzen needs to come back and fix this mess. I’m not a Metzen fan, at all. But Blizzard needs a rude awakening that they gave the worst writer on the team too much say in Shadowlands, and it will cost them in the end.
The answer to Forsaken reproduction all this time was the Light… silly Sylvanas, thinking she needed to steal Valkyir. She could have just converted Sally Whitemane…do’h! Lore is pointless.
I’m amused by them retcon’ing Grimoire already where True Necromancy was explicitly death magic invented by the Primus and now it’s “all equally necromancy” independent of cosmic force somehow
But at least they’re drawing lines in the sand for their metaphysics
They needed a way to explain warlocks under the Legion using necromancy but they already explained Gul’dan stole that knowledge from the Maldraxxi when the Legion attacked Maldraxxus in an ancient war in the Shadowlands.
The Maldraxxi were in turn spying on the Legion.
They didn’t need to convolute necromancy. What’s the difference now betwen the Light choosing ressurection vs necromancy now? Why are some people brought back alive and some brought back dead? This opens a huge can of worms and people are already head scratching.
TBH I cringed a bit at ‘Pallid Lady’. She didn’t need a title, she could’ve just been called Calia Menethil, I don’t really understand the reasoning behind giving her a title to mirror Sylvanas if they’re trying to move the Forsaken away from revering one single figurehead.
It’s a profoundly silly title. Having her be just one member of the council is actually a decent compromise, but they’re undermining that compromise by highlighting her so much.
The conversation with the Margrave was just… idiotic. What’s the point of having a big, complex magic system if all types of magic are totally interchangeable and they all do the same thing?
To be fair… this has been arcane magic in a nutshell. Mages animate the inanimate all the time, usually just brooms or mops, but bones are fair game. Seems like the only thing separating necromancy from that is applying it to corpses. Heck, we’ve seen mages emulating Druidism, or summoning elementals from their native planes like Warlocks do for demons.
That said, my point about arcane magic still stands. Heck, in WC3 Jaina of all people made a soul crystal so Thrall could hurl it like a pokeball to catch himself a shiny Grom.
Like it’s just evident how unwilling the writers are to think about even the most basic of metaphysics for the game universe even after 20 whole years lol
To be honest? I think it was fine if it was just a characteristic of arcane magic, that it could do stuff other cosmic powers could do, but not quite the same, and not quite as effective. Animate bones? Sure. Create a Lich? Sorry, that’s more than it can do.
Going the route of any cosmic power being able to do anything any other one can do does feel pretty bad though. I look forward to the inevitable Life-Raised Undead.
Still trying to figure out the point to Arcane/Order anymore. Right now it looks like First Ones Lite. Zereth Mortis looks 100% like a Titan facility. The first ones come off as Titans, but better.
I don’t know, the catalyst of Daelin Proudmoore’s warmongering joining the very Horde he tried to crush in its infancy is so utterly ironic I kind of dig it.
Honestly the Lordaeron quest was done well enough that I’m not particularly worried for the time being.
Calia’s perfectly suitable as a character the Forsaken wheel out for when it’s time to play with their food. So long as they remember to keep her as just a councilor and not de facto Prime Governor or Queen we should be fine moving forward.
Weren’t there “Life” reanimated orcs in Draenor? That was the only expansion I skipped in it’s entirety when it was current but I somewhat recall there being Botani that had infected orc corpses flailing around for them.