How about the Nippler?
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Definitely have seen MANY variations of that. I am on Moon Guard afterall 
She’s bland. No obvious flaws. Always right. Boring. Pretty much a copy/paste of Talanji, Mayla, and Thalyssra’s characters. Lots of potential, but the writers seem to have settled on the “stunning and brave” trope, which is just lazy, imo.
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This doesn’t actually appear to be an existing writing trope.
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Been there, and you have all my sympathy. I’ll agree to just “wait and see” when it comes to Calia. (But Blizzard still can’t force me to like her! 
)
I love that quote. The essay “On Fairy-Stories” is one of his best pieces, and more people should read it.
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Benedikt,
I genuinely care about what you thibk of my takes, probably too much. I value your opinion and love your style and narrative voice.
But I think people are reacting pretty appropriately to this quest.
I dont think anyone is saying “Blizz hates forsaken!” in the same way that people have said “Blizz hates night elf fans!”
What I do think is that Blizzard tends to take it personal if one of their story beats or announcements (that they were excited about) isn’t as well recieved as they had hoped. On occasion, some devs will respond condescendingly or dismissively. Things like “You don’t have phones?” Or “Sylvanas was always this way” or “what kind of catalogue would you like us to base our female armor designs on?”
This quest feels in some ways as an in game version of that, meant to silence critics of Calia. It seems like some pageantry to show us why we are wrong. Calia is great. She totally fits our fantasy of Forsaken and we are mistaken for having thought otherwise. Undead is undead. Duh.
Blizzard goes back and forth between completely understanding and completely missing it when it comes to what fans want. Like… the Ardenweald play was in many ways a recognition of the ways they fail fans, poking fun more at themselves than us (even though they got some good jabs in there by having the audience be overly critical of the realism) they even had a quest as part of the play called What’s my motivation? which seemed pretty clearly to be an acknowledgement of Sylvanas’ story in bfa.
But people at Blizzard still take things personally when we criticize the story. Instead of saying “Huh… maybe we are going the wrong direction with this. We should go back and see what it is that people are actually upset about, maybe put this content off for a bit” they say “No… its the children who are wrong.”
Or like… “You guys are super mean for making fun of my Lava Eel Vore content.”
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I like Genn… a lot actually. But he needs a great send off before he’s ruined. How I desperately wish Sylvanas had died a hero in Legion.
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I like Genn too, I would prefer it if he stayed in his Worgen form more. I like when he is brash and hard-headed and I feel like being Worgen really fits his ‘Old Wolf’ persona. Stormheim was a great example of the Greymane I love, and I hope to see more of that.
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Probably the best story telling Alliance has ever received as a faction and Genn went from a B rated Alliance character to a triple A able to power any device.
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I’m not blind to how this character could go wrong. But so far this was a pretty good use of her.
Non dearh magic necromancy has been a thing since at least WoD. Gul’Dan uses Fel magic to reanimate the corpse of Magtheridon. We see Shadow and Fel magic raising the dead in Legion frequently. And the line between Life and Death were blured by the Drust already.
Is Naru necromancy dumb? Yes. Is it substantially dumber then most of this setting? Not to me. I’ve mained an undead Priest for 5 years. A zombie shooting holy magic around just isn’t weird to me because that’s what I’m looking at 90% of the time.
And beyond that some of the complaints are, if I’m being charitable, hyperbolic or an outright lie if I’m not.
Calia does not order the Forsaken out of Gilneas. Which - by the by - they literally said it was Blighted in the Sylvanas book. At this point I think they change Gilneas’s status everytime it comes up just to screw with us.
She says she’ll float the issue at the next Council meeting. It just isn’t a logical conclusion to see that and just assume next she’ll hand over Lordaeron to the Alliance.
Which she won’t because Gilneas’s status changes everytime it’s brought up which means it’ll be Blighted or just more mundanely devastated again by war, werewolves and natural disaster when and if we circle back to that plot point.
The Baine comparisons likewise seem utterly unfounded. The Tauren were always the Horde’s peace corp. They’ve been portrayed as gentle giants who love nature and just vibing since minute one. I think it’s lame they don’t have them do anything else for the most part, but ya can’t pretend this isnt unexpected.
The Forsaken are the polar opposite of that. Everything about them is unnatural and violent. Their stock building models have skulls and jars with brain matter in them. And the presence of outright villainous Forsaken characters like Belmont and Faranel do not suggest to me they’re going to change that.
My main worry of Calia is she’ll become the only voice of the Forsaken not because of a malicious intent to undermine a bankable racial fantasy to appease a small cadre of Blue anti fans. But because of laziness. It’s easier to write lines and get VO for one character instead of 4. And that would suck.
But for right now it’s been handled well. Sylvanas was already a train wreck before she flew off the rails. She had to wear every hat the Forsaken had so sometimes she’s a stern but fair matronly figure. Sometimes she’s a ruthless military genius for whom the ends justify the means. And sometimes she’s just a complete lunatic playing mind games for no self evident reason.
So spreading all that out amongst 5 characters sounds like a really good idea, and that appears to be what they’re doing.
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No problem Ben, I enjoy our debates and convos, you really inspire me to think outside of my, sometimes rigid, thought patterns. You don’t have to apologize for your passion.
I hope your loved ones have better days ahead.
Yeah, I know. I’m working on this. It’s related to CPTSD. I have hyperphantasia. People get frustrated with me very easily. 
You shouldn’t let what I think/feel affect you and I’m sorry if I upset you.
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My dude, the issue isn’t that “Light was used to make an undead.”
The issue is that for Calia (and only for Calia) the residents of the Shadowlands find a newfound respect for the light and think it’s completely equal to their magic.
This is the only moment this is held true. Even the Kyrians think the Light is bantha poodoo. Venthyr defeated an ARMY OF NAARU on their own, curbstomped every member but one into permanent death, and kept the final one as a novelty to experiment on.
Let me say this again: Social Service Workers defeated an entire army of Naaru on their own.
Maldraxxus has an entire graveyard of edifices that speak to what Maldraxxus has conquered, and the Light is one of them.
Sindane should’ve said “Well, you’re weaker than normal undead because you’re reanimated with such paltry magics as the Light… but undead is still undead.”
Whether or not Sindane is correct doesn’t matter. Sindane has every reason to believe that the Light is nothing but weak garbotrash to be disregarded or conquered and used for testing. Instead, because Calia is the focus and the entire point of this quest chain is to espouse Calia’s virtues to the player, Sindane praises her and says “nah it’s fine.”
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Agreed or something along the lines of, “Adorable! The Light thinks it can raise people into undeath…well necromancy is necromancy however it is done.”
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Fair enough. I didn’t really play Shadowlands past 9.1. Coming back I did Ardenweald then just enough of Chains of Domination to unlock flying. Haven’t touched anything SL related since.
I’m fairly confident though this is all going to go the way of WoD. I still do not know what exactly happened in that expansion outside the very limited scope of content I’ve seen. And I’ve never been confused because the entirety of WoD might as well have never happened for how much it impacts the story. Even the playable Mag’Har aren’t from WoD they’re from a future version of it we see 5 minutes of.
SL will hopefully go the same route.
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I guess I’m one of the few outliers, but I like most of the Shadowlands well enough. 3d printers are dumb, so is ardenweald, and kyrestia is the most evil entity in the setting, but social service workers who try to redeem souls is a neat idea.
zoovy ain’t worth his salt, but primus is obscenely cool and i will never not be malding that forsaken got no time at all with him. forsaken – a horde race – having a true god. imagine.
c’est la vie i guess.
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Eh, what’s a god to a non believer?
We’ve Bwomsamdi and the other Loa. I honestly wish we got any info on Anshe but at least they didnt say she’s Elune so, could be worse.
I was happy for the Forsaken to rub elbows with Merelith in a roundabout way but I’m very comfortable with leaving it at that. The Forsaken have their own distinct vibe going on and I personally don’t really need Scourge stuff muking it up.
Like people have suggested giving them a Necropolis and if I was making a flying Forsaken fortress I’d have it be a gigantic armored WW1 zeppelin spooked up to the 9s and flying via lighter than air Blight. So it has the added threat of being a giant bomb if you shoot down.
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I dislike her because she’s lightforged undead and that concept will never not be dumb in WoW’s setting. It’s completely antithetical to what we know undead as. I would prefer if Calia was just regular run of the mill undead, but whatever, it’s not a big deal. I think a lot of people think she will end up being another Baine, who is cringe. I don’t think that will be the case though. If people think she’s suddenly going to be ‘death to the alliance’ they’ll be disappointed. I think it’s a bit telling that a lot of Horde player’s first knee-jerk reaction to a character that wants to make diplomatic inroads is that they’re a sympathizer and they’re ruining the Horde, but will insist on the other hand that the Horde are not bloodthirsty warmongers and their aggression is justified because Alliance persecutes them. I think a large part of that is Blizzard conditioning the Horde response, but still.
Thing is, Bwonsamdi felt like a true god before shadowlands. but they nerfed him hard for ardenweald. went from an ancient entity older than the entire troll race, with the only known realm of death, to a weak troll subservient to elune’s sister, whose death realm is just a demiplane inside of ardenweald.
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Just a point of information, Gul’dan using fel on a demon is about par for the course and has been basically since Classic. Demons are constantly resummoned/revived from the Nether. It is where their “spirit” goes. The same can be said for elementals. In the mortal plane their essence goes back to their elemental plane, needing to be brought back by time or shamanistic magic.
If the plane “normal” mortals go to is Shadowlands, then it is almost a whole different story. Those spirits that were bound for the Shadowlands and therefore other bodies/forces need to wrestle the soul away from there. Fel, Light, Arcane/Order, whatever need to beat back Death to get to them. So unless those bodies, as we see with Argus, are stuffed full of light (to use Calia’s case) its crossing streams and doesnt really make sense.
Its it all that big of a deal? At the moment, no. But its just a point of contention that makes me at least, and a few more of us, scratch our head and go ‘why is this all the same now?’ Functionally necromancy and living beings and warlock rituals and demons may be the same, but they have certain limitations . But bringing a demon back with fel magic from the Twisting Nether isnt the same as the Naaru sniping a soul from the Shadowlands with Light magic. It may be semantics, but its semantics that do mean a bit to me, especially since Im someone who summons demons to do my dirty work fairly often.
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WoD is a million times better as an expansion. I am compelled to make a garrison on every alt I make. I will never again set foot in the Shadowlands.
But I did enjoy instanced PvP. People can complain about the gearing but I thought it was fine.
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