Calia Derangement Syndrome

Lore Story Forum
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They by and large aren’t terribly concerned with the ethics of the living. They have their own rules now.

Keep in mind the Forsaken basically operate on Looney Tunes logic in an otherwise still flesh and blood world. Ripping someone’s jaw off is not an agonizing and gruesome murder but a harmless prank.

In Warspear they actually hint the Forsaken might forget this at times. An undead is trading war stories with an Orc and seems genuinely confused as to why a human would react so dramatically to having his leg cut off.

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102

As a brief sidenote, if we are strolling into Maldraxxus to get pointers on plagues… why would The Forsaken not also get pointers on “proper” necromancy? Abomination player skin when?

Calia has clearly shifted directions, likely due to backlash. Her B Plot got cut from SL, much like Baine, and we can plainly see the ongoing train of ill-conceived, attempted placations of the Nelf community on display with each passing cinematic (I mention this last bit just to emphasize that this isn’t a years long narrative, but a story twisting in the wind being played by ear). Having said that, it means they are heeding audience reception, so credit where credit is due. What we have got with Calia was about as good as could be reasonably expected.

Not going to celebrate just yet, though. I’ll settle for tentatively pleased. We are always one cinematic away from some boneheaded decision steamrolling what is in the service of some new Rule of Cool metaplot. Given this game’s track record, I don’t think it fair to begrudge people a jaded skepticism about what is next for Calia. We can only hope they continue to consider whether the story is serving the audience vs. disregarding them.

As another somewhat related aside, I’m still not a fan of Voss being a prominent voice insofar as any leadership capacity. I found her BFA presentation a little jarring, given my last run in with her was as a self-loathing, necromancer stalking avatar of murder who hated everything to do with undeath. I didn’t hate it, and I could see her coming to grips with her reality and helping other newly risen transition in a less murderous psychosis way… but why is she speaking for anyone? If we’re deadset on Calia, I would dump Derek and let Voss be the Nathanos replacement at this point. Mostly just want Voss to keep her “I excel at perforating people” edge, I think.

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103

But she was perfect for that.

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I am hoping that this means Forsaken will move into the campiness of their classic era forsaken.

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Was it campy when they like, poisoned a dog because they wanted it’s owner to feel pain LOL.

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Yeah like Cursewords said, in the novel it explicitly says she returned as undead because that’s how she chose to return…so she seemingly could have been truly resurrected if she’d wanted to be.

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yes? There is a whole genre of over-the-top horror genre films that lean into the campiness of brutality. It’s camp because it’s so over-the-top brutal. That’s what makes it absurd and amazing. Like the idea of an Apothecary loving the idea of a Plague being made manifest so you can fight it in person.

It’s over-the-top. It’s campy.

Stop trying to moralize a fantasy setting into bland nothing-ness.

EDIT: @ the thread. I hate Calia and I’m completely 100% fine with her role in this quest line, and her reduced tertiary role on the Desolate Council as one-voice-among-many. Blizzard would be wise to leave it there.

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109

As long as there’s acknowledgement and consequences, because the Forsaken do not have the means to survive without procreation, as was originally said in Cata. Don’t screw over the entire lore: if they wanna be evil, let there be consequences. Not like in Cata where they were campy, but no consequences ever came from them poisoning tauren and the like lol.

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Nah. Warcraft is more fun when it leans into the extremes. When it leans into the freak show. When it leans into the chaos. When it lets itself be a production.

The sad, maudlin wallowing in pain, and depression, and bleakness of BfA and Shadowlands is boring. It’s not interesting in any way. Warcraft is not the medium to tell such a story.

Warcraft is a story about 12-story tall Blight Monstrosities beat to death by a squadron of Bat-Riders trying to reclaim their desiccated sewer city. No more moralizing in Warcraft. No more Teldrassils and no more beating the players over the head with real-world moralistic conundrums.

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111

Thats not what I actually meant when saying ‘let there be consequences.’ Forsaken lost a major advantage that was allowing them to hold their current territories, while nations like Khaz Modan realistically have become superpowers unto themselves and border the Forsaken. If the Forsaken pick a fight, do not hold back on the abilities of the Alliance. Or let humanity do so, etc. This isn’t even specific to Forsaken. In general, stop making the Alliance do nothing in retort to anything, and stop holding them back.

Not about the morals. Let Forsaken be evil, but stop holding the people they attack back just so Forsaken can do it without repercussions. (For reference, I want Kaldorei to do fairly awful and questionable things to any neighbor they consider a threat. It’s not about morality, it’s about letting the Alliance actually have agency and the strength actually present in their lore, in the actual narrative of the game.)

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112

Well I agree there. The Forsaken should have come into conflict with the Alliance in reclaiming Lordaeron.

Blizzard is very lazy in their storytelling and they always skip ahead to where they want to be rather than where they are and it consistently harms the narrative.

I also want the Alliance to be more pro-active and aggressive in the story.

The real problem are all the dullards who have decided “FaCtIoN CoNfLiCt bad mmkay” who are to blame. They are ruining Warcraft as an IP. Just because BfA was badly written doesn’t mean we have to throw the conflict between the Horde and Alliance out the window. For one thing, the Alliance are owed a villain moment to balance out Blizzard villain-batting the Horde twice in less than 5 years. And secondly we are owed an actual faction-war expansion, not a Horde Civil War Expansion that MoP and BfA ended up being.

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113

I can vaguely understand where it is coming from. But to me, it almost feels like a means of coping. Similarly to some people saying encryption made this patch better: I don’t think covering up problems makes them less of a problem. Means people just won’t think deeper on it until later, and will get the gratification of ‘new area’ over dumb lore for a bit.

The faction war has been written terribly lately, but so was Warcraft in general. By the same logic some people have, the game shouldn’t continue at all lol. I think the problem is even when blizzard writes internal faction drama, it’s usually kinda terrible. Generally speaking I think the Horde should be internally super divided. Look at how contradictory so many of their core values are to each other, even after blizz spent years retconning a lot of the earlier lore that made stuff like some magics more controversial and hated (like how Arcane used to be perceived, which I think was cooler). But thats not presented until suddenly civil war starts. The internal strife doesn’t mean anything up to that point, outside of Baine getting mad once for like .5 seconds lol.

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In a lot of ways, I kind of saw these 9.2.5 questlines optimistically as a step in that direction.

“So… here’s a new World Tree Seed… super duper special… your people are super happy to help. They’re not in hell anymore. See ya!”

“Light necromancy? It’s necromancy. Whatever. You’re undead. Move on!”

“Undercity? Deblight thyself!”

…

I’m actually a little bit giddy that by the time Dragonflight hits they may have (basically) undone everything from the prior 2 expansions.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/v3duas/shes_not_stupid_but_she_is_dumb/?%24deep_link=true&correlation_id=63247854-886b-46a9-a7b9-a96642486d55&post_fullname=t3_v3duas&post_index=2&ref=email_digest&ref_campaign=email_digest&ref_source=email&utm_content=post_title&%243p=e_as&_branch_match_id=1061611049423036048&utm_medium=Email%20Amazon%20SES&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAA22PXWrDMBCET%2BO%2BJQZLUZxCCIXSayyytbGX6g9pVff4XTfNW0Eso2%2BY0WplzvW17ws6R3y0OR89xc9e5Vs3aJWvCLa%2BiEyFForWQyv%2Buu6pTr11w4ecbduOf%2Fk5BQFlh2mTKfeAkavIL%2BWa3UVdsUJMDJVbJgdTE7kiUAXXwrR3KqnVDjHDvkyn3rk07AYzp1LQW6YUgZxwowZ9Hk%2F6MI5mOmhjLwd7nmRcjNGDHo07nSSXU2W4N%2B%2BjDbjXKXiu8%2FAoOvwWYxBQ8C4KgyUPjhas%2FIAw25AtLfF%2Ft6ZWZnx6AhsHmFNk%2Bb%2FQ32eY2OMPR1t1YXMBAAA%3D

Comments had me laughing:

“Whose Horde is it Anyway?, the game where the character choices are made up and the story doesn’t matter.”

“That’s right, the points are like…Med’an”

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117

It seems to me they’re trying to normalize Red Blue relations.

Hopefully this is in service of bringing the faction conflict back to a Cold War with flashpoints. Imo that’s not just the best way to do the faction conflict but the only way.

Making it the main narrative thrust of a story or even a hugely important B plot just doesn’t work. Because the nature of stories means you’ll be forced to lose, but at the same time you can never truly win either, as the nature of the game means things have to return to the status quo.

So any faction war storyline is guaranteed to piss off and dissapoint everyone at one point or another.

Plus while I would like to see the Alliance be less goody two shoes, that’s their brand. The Alliance are your typical fantasy hero good guys. To the point where some stories come off as a bit psychotic, like how the Defias and Frostmane have nothing but very legitimate greviances but are still framed as mindless bad guys who must be met with violence.

Seriously it’s pretty weird there’s a quest where you behead the leader of a people’s revolution against corrupt aristocrats for the Crown, and this is framed as entirely and unambiguously good, because turns out they were out of control bad guys.

Remember kids, employees mad about wage theft are all terrorists!

So, I’m really doubting they’re ever going to let the Alliance do something evil. Which means the Horde has to do the evil stuff, which also isn’t fun.

Seriously in BFA there was apparently a tentative plan to have the Horde round up the citizens of Astranaar and execute them via firing squad. That’s uh, extremely scrwed up. Throwing cartoon goo at people that explodes them into spooky scary skeletons is fun fantasy violence. That’s just a horrific thing that happens IRL. I’m okay playing as Skeletor, not Joseph Kony.

So on top of a faction war storyline being inherently inflammatory and unfulfilling, it’s almost certainly going to make the Alliance good and the Horde evil. Maybe down the line we can revisit it if Blizz has new talent that seems like they can handle a story like that. But for right now Cold War with flashpoints seems the best idea.

What I’d really like to see a return of is the overworld objectives from BC. Having bases to capture that’ll give the winning team a buff like in Hellfire and a town you fight for that unlocks special vendors if you win like in Nagrand would be really cool.

If I win or lose a fight with the Alliance I’d prefer if I actually did the fighting. It’s not fun as a story beat because the winner was announced before it even started. Meaning you and a person who’s never even played WoW had the exact same outcome on the result. That’s just kinda lame.

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118

Thinking about this, I reckon they could make her a pretty good version of Gene Wilder in The Producers. Just this kinda mortified-but-complicit accessory who naively points out horrible things that they totally shouldnt do… that they, of course, do.

You know, Belmont… it would be horrible, but I just realized that Stormwind harbor couldn’t be sieged, but a favoring wind could blow a cloud of blight right into the city… good thing we wouldn’t do that…

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I think a role like that and having her be an ambassador is a good idea.

I’d honestly put her as flagged unfriendly to the Alliance like Malfurion in Darnassas and have her just hang out in the throne room. While the actual Desolate Council runs the day to day bureaucracy.

On the otherhand though having her be a healer while you fight the other 4 councilors could be cool.

Really wish Blizz would beef up the faction world bosses. In Legion they were a joke and while they got buffed in BFA I three maned Velen.

I get as PvP targets the other players are supposed to be the main challenge. But with WM and some capitols being sparsely populated giving them a bit more bite could be fun.

Really showed the sorry state of things when the For The Alliance achievement just has Baine and Lor’Themar on it.

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It seems to me they’re trying to hit CTRL+Z for as much of what happened in the last two expansions as they can.

Which is fantastic. It’s probably the only time I’ve been rooting for all of this to end up like a Brady Bunch episode, where by the next episode, nothing from the last episode matters.

All the Night Elf spirits happily contributing to their new and improved treehouse (we can call it a new flame suppression system!). It’s just a seed now, but you know, give it a year or so of real time and it’ll grow.

The Forsaken eating up the blight. I’m hoping they’ll be done … just about the time Dragonflight pre-patch releases.

Anduin will realize that being mind controlled doesn’t make you a bad person and an expansion later Sylvanas will finish grinding her Maw dailies.

Just in time for some new writers to decide they want to take on the faction conflict again with BFA 2.

//Can someone check if Blizzard owns the trademark on “The Re-Genociding” - because I feel like that could be the sub title.

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In that case they’re going to have to axe the “Yrel and Lightbound” holy war story arc, because I promise you… I would bet my bottom dollar… that when/if they implement that “Lightbound” story, they will use it to beat us over the head with real-world moralistic conundrums. In fact, I think that’s the reason they invented that story arc in the first place, to be a platform for author ax-grinding.

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122

I just think it’s going to suck. I could not care less who wins in a war between yellow bloom effects and purple particle ones.

They already did the"Light does not mean good’ trope perfectly with the Scarlets. Who were a very real feeling evil. History is rife with groups that started with the noble goal of building a shining city on a hill who descended into paranoia, sectarian violence and mass grave digging.

Hell of a lot more compelling than "This wind chime’s got ulterior motives’ can ever hope to be.

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