Could a Red Wedding twist save this plot?

Lore Story Forum
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Like this is all a big misdirection/smokescreen for an actual twist. That’s it’s not just one big copypaste of MoP.

For example:
8.2.5 or 8.3 will come out, N’zoth will be killed/re-imprisoned, and Sylvanas will be captured and put in Trial. Again, eerily similar to War Crimes. Sylvanas is livid, insisting that the Horde are fools for not following her/being loyal, but won’t elaborate as to why. Most of the Horde leaders are happy to write her off as the cause of all of this evil, most vocally Baine, Saurfang, and Thrall.

Cue gathering of Horde leaders and 3 representatives of the Alliance, Anduin, Jaina, and Tyrande. Tyrande is unexpectedly delayed. Anduin and his magic bones sense something’s amiss but can’t determine why, and unexpectedly leaves to find Sylvanas. Again, on-the-nose repeat of War Crimes, but with Sylvanas and Anduin instead of Garrosh and Anduin.

Thrall says some nonsense about building a better future and the merits of cooperation, some nonsense, and it cuts to Jaina. Jaina addresses the Horde with honeyed words resembling her Vanilla-WotLK self, but slowly descends into jaded reminiscing of all of the Horde’s warcrimes, and Thrall’s role that tragedy by uplifting Garrosh, setting everything into motion.

Unlike Garrosh, Sylvanas comes around to Anduin after there was no other choice for her actions and that the Alliance and Horde were infiltrated, something only she could see. Jaina continues ranting, everyone attending is getting nervous, and ends saying “Never again…father. You were right. You were always right.” and initiates a Red Wedding like purge, with several iconic members of the Horde being slaughtered or imprisoned by forces of the void.

Sylvanas insists that the Night Elves were being corrupted and Anduin was being lead astray by one of his advisers, that all her atrocities were to prevent a greater evil from arising. Just as Anduin offers to help combat this new foe, Sylvanas is dragged down into Hell/the Void, with Anduin being unable to stop it.

Thrall and a number of Horde leaders are brutally impaled, and a few (like Saurfang and Baine) get to live to see their ideals and efforts be perverted, and the war start anew.

And…WoW 2, a timeskip and final expansion.

I feel like this level of retreading of MoP plot points has to be on purpose.

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This reminds me of a thread on the old forums about wildly improbable but totally awesome endings for BfA. Of the 30 or so proposed endings on there, this one would definitely crack my top 5.

There will always be a place in my heart for your AU, Gerak.

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I doubt it.

The poignancy of the Red Wedding was in part due to the Starks not deserving such a fate. If it happens to the Horde, they’ve more than earned it. Nbd. If it happens to the Alliance, it’s just one more in a long list of their tragedies, to the point that story beat is starting to get a bit stale. In particular, ontop of everything else they’ve suffered, the Night Elves should be the last race to both suffer a corruption plot, and be forced to play the role of the Freys.

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Let’s do it. Though have Jaina kill more leaders. Preferably all of the Horde ones so we can start truly fresh.

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Shock value-based writing never works.

The Red Wedding worked because it was the logical ending to Robb and Catelyn’s story. GRRM’s gift as a writer is that he is able to trick the reader into believing characters and plotlines seem more important than they actually are. You expect Robb to get a more dignified end, so you’re surprised when he and his men just get horribly slaughtered and die in vain. But, in hindsight, it’s clear how every decision they made was building up to that moment. It is a logical, if unpleasant, end to their story. But even GRRM wouldn’t have Daenerys die of dehydration in the desert, because that would just be random and pointless.

Or, to put it in WoW terms, look at Varian and Vol’jin. Varian’s death works because his character arc is complete and killing him off allows the story to move onto other characters. Vol’jin’s death does not, because he hasn’t had a chance to do anything and only dies for the sake of making the Legion seem more dangerous.

If they tried to write something like this, then there’d be a big shock and a round of “Holy crap! Everyone’s dead!” that would last for a week or two, but then after that Blizzard would still be stuck with bad writers trying to tell a story in an incredibly constrained world, only now they have even fewer characters to work with.

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Did we read the same book? The Starks are a walking object lesson in why staunchly putting ideals above reality causes harm to you and everyone around you. Ned gave up the possible for the perfect and died, Rob tried to live out a romance fantasy in the middle of a very real war. Catelyn put her personal sense of family above all else and she paid for it in enough blood to drive her insane.

There’s a reason Jon’s story is about finding the best potential path out of all possibility, only he falls prey to the exact same pitfall as the Starks, but then (no idea how it will play out in the books as yet) is given a rebirth into a far less stiff and blinkered version of himself.

Edit: Sansa and Arya also have arcs very much along this theme, with Sansa learning that ignoring the political and the false in life does not at all make you immune to it, and Arya approaching from the other side - she goes as far as to symbolically approach the precipice of abandoning all identity and ideals, joining an organization serving as this metaphorically and literally in the story, only to confront what that means. Basically, the Starks are a brilliant deconstruction/reconstruction of fantasy epic protagonists all around.

They were people with good intentions but the whole point of the Red Wedding was expressly that they deserved everything they got.

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i gotta say, this scenario sounds exciting.

but i prefer the red wedding/matyr scenario.

so we have all these leaders killed but they go in a blaze of glory to, lets say save the world. so with their heroic sacrifice, they can all end their arcs at the same time and start the new wow era.

A big event that changed the history of wow!

but jaina impaling everyone sounds good to.

sadly, it would be pretty much this.
we can’t trust the writers who are re-doing mop.

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Blizzard needs to read another book.

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Basically. Tolkien and Lewis both agreed that evil people facing some sort of judgement (eventually) was a core tennet of fantasy. Otherwise, it ruins the escapism, and shatters the illusion of fantasy by being too much like the real world. The feeling of being unsatisfied eventually outweighs the feeling of enjoyment.

It’s why I stopped watching GoT (I haven’t watched since dear Olenna died). The fact that Cersei Lannister is still alive eventually just became a bridge too far.

Edit: And that’s a book and tv series with a talented author at the helm. Nevermind the half-baked, slapdash, story-by-committee of an MMO.

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Cersei is the best character in the show. She never fails to entertain.

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Oh golly, yes. George R.R. Martin is so flavor of the month right now, and most people trying to imitate his style of storytelling don’t have his skill at pulling it off.

To be fair, though, it’s clear that Blizzard has read at least one other book–The Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft. (They may also have read LOTR, but I suspect they just watched the movies.)

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That was true for a while, but over the last two seasons I’ve found her to be pretty boring. She’s just a one note, evil villain at this point.

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God I remember laughing so much while reading Before The Storm every time Gold would write that sh** omg

Dude we barely have NPCs at disposal to kill, if we do this red wedding stuff the horde will be the PC and the cockroach seller in Orgrimmar lol
I know that you are hyped with the new season of GoT, I am too, but jesus leave our NPCs alone for a while until we have new cool dudes to be turned into puppy killers

THANK_YOU.gif
Vol’Jin also died to please Sylvanas’ fanbase of edgelords

Well on my note if Sylvanas doesn’t end up as a loot pinhata I’m fine with it, I expect nothing from Blizzard but another writing that if I stuck a pencil on my butt and wrote with my as* I would’ve done something better

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Eh.

Tv show only i think. They created a whole different character to be his beloved wifey.

It’s been years since I read the books but the impression I got from them was that Robb acted like the teenage boy he was for once and didn’t keep it in his pants around a pretty and willing girl. He then did the honorable thing and married her.

But I don’t think the Red Wedding was a twist. It was extreme but it was very clear that the Starks would suffer for insulting the Freys.

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You mean like what happens every other expansion? Hard pass. Sick of losing iconic Horde characters.

Fun that you don’t mention any Alliance leaders getting slaughtered too. Can’t touch those impeccable bastions of high morals, amirite? Can’t lose the protagonists.

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I’d be so down for this, but let’s not kid ourselves, Blizzard doesn’t have the balls.

But for my part, if I’m going to have to work for a sociopath, then sure. Make it Circe.

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Killing elves and humans isn’t a crime like killing criters and bugs.

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Gotta have something after losing two cities and a town.

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Take anything other than our characters, then. The Horde has lost so many characters already our narrative is almost unrecognizable. Who still actually talks about Theramore or Southshore on these forums except to use as a burn against the Horde? And Teldrassil was met with not only Undercity, but the raid against Dazar’alor (which, might I add, was designed as a raid and not as a player hub, making it far more of a hassle for Horde players to get around than Alliance. That’s a pretty big price in my opinion. The city’s layout is crap.)

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The Red Wedding didn’t even save the plot of it’s own series. Great shock value though.