The central founding value of Forsaken is freewill. They managed to regain autonomy from the Lich King, with Sylvanas being the first. One of the attractive elements of their characters was that they were not evil, abusive, power-hunger, or possessed other dark personality traits because they were mind-controlled or fundamentally evil - but because being a zombie sucks and they have to put up with it. They had to weather constant torment between fending off the Lich King’s influence and suffering through a physical state of decay. That’s enough to influence anyone’s world view and psyche.
Suddenly telling the players that after two decades of character development, the character we knew as Sylvanas, Leader of the Forsaken, was actually an aberration created by necromantic forces she SUPPOSEDLY defeated is kinda a slapintheface. Especially when we learn REAL Sylvanas has the personality of a lawful good paladin and has been locked away inside some alternative subconscious realm all this time. Kinda pulls the rug out from under the Forsaken identity. Do they also have split souls? Sylvanas is basically another Calia - Undead, but nothing thematically relevant to the Forsaken.
I just don’t know why this was ever considered a good idea. It’s not only contrived, but a death sentence for the characterization of a foundational member of the Warcraft Universe.
The writers aren’t going to read this, but they seriously need to stop re-characterizing lead characters for the needs of the moment (looking at you Jaina, Thrall, Saurfang.) Blizzard’s employees should respect what has come before and the work of previous artists.
Tell that to Leonid Bartholomew, or Meryl Felstorm. Just because they got it rough doesn’t mean they have every right to be evil.
The problem with the Forsaken is that they have done NOTHING to show the world they aren’t the Scourge. If anything, they gave them more reason to hate.
The funny thing is that the Royal Apothecary Society(who are all the bad and evil Forsaken NPCs we know about) used to be Scarlet Crusade or people like Godfrey…
They were already rotten to the core before becoming Forsaken!
The Banshee Queen is an anomaly created by Frostmourne while the other bad Forsaken were bad before dying and being reanimated.
Honestly we should get a story where the Royal Apothecary Society joins up with Denathrius just to leave us with Forsaken from outside the Royal Apothecary Society(which we have few NPCs of).
The Banshee Queen is still in Sylvanas, that character still made choices. That character has not been subsumed by the blonde High Elf. The cinematic focused on the High Elf version to remind people who that character is (or to introduce that character to the 90% of the WoW playerbase that never played WC3 apparently).
All of you need to stop thinking about invalidation, character and consequences because you are thinking about the story more than anyone who gets paid to.
This. The Sylvanas we’ve encountered with for most of Warcraft’s lifetime always had her soul, her choices were her choices. It’s just Zovaal intentionally ensured that Sylvanas reuniting with her lost soul fragment would force her to be stuck in a loop of reliving everything she’s done because the fragments couldn’t properly be connected, like Uther’s fragments could.
He had the foresight to see that Sylvanas wouldn’t always remain by his side and devised a method of punishment for her in the event of a betrayal. Thus when he forces the soul fragment into her and the fragment couldn’t rejoin the soul, it was forced to witness all the horrors committed by the rest of her soul and reeled in horror.
The majority of forsaken (and Azeroth undead in general) weren’t personally killed and reanimated by a mourneblade…the soul splitting/fragmenting ONLY happens to those people (like Uther and Sylvanas). The other OG Forsaken were killed and raised via the plague of undeath with their souls intact. The effects of being turned undead for most people is just like a roll of the dice whether they emotionally/mentally return as the same personality they had while living, with dulled or twisted emotions, or outright insanity or evil.
The guy who went insane AKA Marshal Redpath while not a Scarlet Crusader was one of those Anti-Mage Soldiers who believed Arcane Magic damned their Souls I do believe…
The shock of becoming Undead would naturally have an effect on someone who believed Undeath damned his Soul so Redpath realizing that he was “damned” went completely insane talking to himself in argument before creating the Rotbrains.
In the end the Bad Undead in the Forsaken are simply a symptom of the Decadence that had overtaken the Living of Lordaeron before WC2.
Interesting how the amount of Soul cut out by a Mourneblade varies. Since a Mourneblade cuts Souls when the wielder is Angry that means that Sylvanas angered Arthas more than Uther did!
A major feat considering how in the Arthas Novel Arthas apparently had no intention of ever sparing Uther unlike Gavinrad or even the High Elves whom he had given opportunities to surrender.
Of course considering how Arthas greeted Uther with bored impatience instead of Anger with the only Anger being towards the Nathrezim for testing him according to the Novel he probably did not have as much Anger fueling the Mourneblade as he did with Sylvanas, Gavinrad and especially Anasterian.
Uther by the time Arthas had faced him in battle had already proven himself to be justified so Arthas had no actual grudge with him yet knew that Uther’s rightness would be exhausting and thus wanted him dead as soon as possible.
Uther to Death Knight Arthas was the same as Tirion was to Lich King Arthas: a Paladin of righteousness he knew was going to go on an angry righteous speech which was expected.
Gavinrad on the other hand he expected to be able to negotiate with which is why he was angered when he spat on his offer of being spared.
So to invalidate it is right up your alley? You should be as happy as we are, except for the part that some Forsaken maintain their living likeness, and Calia declared the Forsaken as the true rulers of Lordaeron.
Shadowlands broke a lot of core themes for races, in a way that was more sudden than the slow erosion we’ve had for a while now. Shamanism, for instance, is almost entirely busted as a concept now, as is most Spiritual lore such as ghosts and spirits. They had clear ways to link this new lore with their prior stuff but they’ve sprinted in the opposite direction at every chance.
Elune lore and Night Elves religion is also broken by Shadowlands, along with Drust lore and Tidesage lore. This is honestly what makes this expansion so much worse for the story than even the factions going to war or Teldrassil being burned. Because it fractures the very base, the major themes, that are supposed to act as the anchor for the story and the world.
What’s that you say? The writers are retconning fundamental story concepts in a way that shows they either never understood them in the first place or simply don’t care?