Minor rant time. Blizzard have already told this story before, it’s a cliché they adore;
They did it in the Diablo franchise with Malthael’s Reapers
They did it again in Diablo with the Archangel Imperius.
They did it again in Starcraft with the Tal’drim Protoss.
They did it again in Warcraft, as you said, with the Scarlet Crusade (which I agree was done well).
They did it again in Warcraft with Lei Shen’s Mogu (and they took their path because Lei Shen thought that’s what the Titans wanted).
Take this story concept; “pro-order religious group gets fanatical in pursuit of order, gets beat down by mere mortals and there’s a big renunciation of the whole thing instead of just the extremist parts”. Sound familiar? It describes all of the above;
Malthael’s Reapers wanted to wipe out humanity, they were defeated by mortal human-angel hybrids, schisms ensued.
Imperius opposed Tyrael over how to handle humanity. Humans, along with Tyrael prove Imperius wrong, Tyrael renounces his angel-hood and stays human.
The Tal’drim Protoss were fanatical about the Khala, they fight and lose to humans, then the Tal’drim and all Protoss inexplicably renounce and denounce the Khala even though they only severed their nerve chords to stop Amon.
The Scarlet Crusade were surviving Light worshippers of Lorderaen who wanted to take back their home from undead, got turned to fanaticism through a combination of human foibles and Dreadlord manipulation. Adventurers repeatedly thrash them, they have many apostates.
Lei-Shen was disgusted Ra-den gave up, stole his powers, then unified the Mogu to do what he thought was the Titans’ will. They got beat down by mortal races and now the Mogu for the most part are self-serving warlords (the Rajani Mogu are a minority).
Don’t get me started on how poorly written the Naaru Xe’ra was - she has so many plot holes I’ve made a list of them over two dozen points long.
Blizzard throwing anything Light-related under the bus makes me worry about what they’ll ultimately do with Calia. What do you think is a good direction for Calia?
Gotta get that Babylon 5 in there. The wind chimes in that series had ulterior motives too, and clearly there have been major fans of the franchise on the WoW dev team for a long time.
You’re just bolstering my “Blizzard’s creatively bankrupt” position. I wonder how much of it’s “fans of Babylon 5” and how much is “still salty decades after their parents made them to go to Sunday School instead of playing sports or video games in the morning”.
GoT started going downhill in Season 5, otherwise definitely. Season 8 was the dumpster fire of dumpster fires.
Good for them. I haven’t seen the show and thusly don’t care.
Know what I am a fan of? Warcraft. Maybe they should stick to writing stories for Azeroth and stop trying to rip off people more talented than them working on a completely different project.
They tried to give us the Red Wedding and we wound up with GoT Seasons 8 with Teldrassil.
Ugh. Babylon 5. That was a sign to turn the TV off. If I flipped through the channels and saw it, I knew there was nothing on TV.
Like Stargate.
If Blizzard wants to base its lore on cheesy syndicated malarky from 2 decades ago, may I suggest Pamala Anderson’s VIP? I mean, at least that was fun to watch.
Some players need a character to hate at all times and will nitpick incessantly about them regardless of how they’re portrayed and beyond the point of objective story critique. More often than not, this is a woman character, though it’s hard to tell if it’s because they’re women or because Blizzard is just… subpar at writing woman characters. Could be both, who knows, but male characters tend to not get that same degree of vitriol even at their worst.
Jaina and Tyrande are likely going to be shuffled off now, or at least less of a target since both are no longer pro-faction war. Sylvanas is up on the shelf for at least a few expansions, so no dice there. Taelia almost got slapped with it for one misplaced piece of dialogue.
Which leaves Calia. A character the playerbase was wanting to pop up or at least be relevant for years only to go ‘wait not like that’ when it actually happened. Now, that is not to say there aren’t issues with her writing, of course. The way she ended up undead was… off, to say the least, and rife with Goldenisms. But I predict we’re going to see a lot more vitriol tossed her way over the next few years, because she checks all the boxes for it.
Truthfully, I don’t expect Calia to be villain-batted when the inevitable “Light Is Not Good” expansion happens. She’s a Christie Golden special, so Christie Golden will protect her. I expect Calia to be the face of the “reasonable” light users, Horde-side. If any Horde light-user gets villain-batted, I think it will be Liadrin, especially after how they portrayed her in BfA.
I can honestly say I never wanted Calia to return or be relevant. But my feelings toward her used to be indifference rather than actual dislike.
That, and her portrayal in BfA in general, is what made me dislike and resent her. I actively wish for her not to be part of the Horde or to hold any position of leadership. And I would feel the same if she were Arthas’s little brother.
Reasonable Light user on the Alliance side is Boros, and Boros only. He’s the only one I trust based on his Legion dialogue about retibution not being the same as vengence.
You would be an outlier then. I’ve been on every version of the Story Forums since Wrath, and Calia threads were pretty common. Hell, when she popped up in Legion and was just a follower, after over a decade of speculation, people were disappointed. Tons of theorycrafting, people thinking some NPCs were her in disguise, and so forth.
So that’s one example, yes, but on a level of extreme… insanity. I’m not sure it’s a counter to the initial point, though I’ll stress again that I don’t know if it’s because they’re women characters. I just see this happen to women characters way more often, and to a greater degree, than any male ones.
I think you are being very charitable by suggesting the issues are about “writing women.”
From where I see it, there are a bunch of issues with writing Males too. The fact that Golden wants to make Anduin some example of AntiGay/AntiStraight misconceptions is pretty gross. And then we have Medan…
Blizzard is pretty bad at writing dudes, too.
I used to like Anduin. But it almost feels like he was hijacked by some author’s personal agenda towards masculinity. Maybe it is best that Blizzard puts some Characters away on a shelf, before those Characters are further ruined by the current writing team.
Tbf Derek also catches a lot of heat. Despite having less characterization than Calia. Due entirely to incorrect data mining.
Seriously the guy has said less than 10 sentences and just stood around thus far. And I’m game for undead pirate shenanigans which is the obvious direction to take him in.
He’s Jaina’s brother, of course he’s going to catch heat. Blizzard is piling Alliance members into the Horde. Hell at Shadowlands’ launch they had Vereesa (IDR names, anduin’s adopto mom assassin) with the horde leaders multiple times.
Did you not play BFA?
Calia literally lived with Jaina. She’s best friends with the King of Stormwind.
What about reading BTS?
Calia is best friends with the King of Stormwind. She convinces him to bring her with him to the meet and greet in Arathi, even though he knows it’s a stupid decision.
She attempts to get the Desolate Council to quit the Horde and join the Alliance.
The Forsaken’s modus operandi since forever has been to plumb other factions (the Alliance, the Scourge, Dalaran, Gilneas…) for members. As their new quest line took pains to remind you, most of them are the un-living citizens of fallen Lordaeron, the founding kingdom of the Alliance. Its un-living princess joining their ranks is hardly surprising.
There’s an incredibly huge difference in raising nobodies who were no one before they were forsaken, and recruiting the woman whomst succeeded in getting the Forsaken to betray the Horde.
