It still curdles my eggroll that Anduin went “there’s just not enough resources to spare to retake Darkshore 
” and then fought a two-year-long, back-and-forth, meat-grinder stalemate over a couple of hills with nothing important on them.
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How about we make her a Wild God/Loa instead and then just let her return to Azeroth like that so she gets the best of all worlds.
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its gonna be something that after everything, between the actual battle for lordaeron, all the war table missions and casualties from those (lordaeron has its own achievement!), and the schism anduin personally caused in the alliance after telling tyrande that the blighted ruins of the sewage city were far more important than her peoples homeland, that he just gives up lordaeron for the forsaken when calia asks him to
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I haven’t read all the mission table text but I think you’re missing a few beats. IIRC they laid siege to Lordaeron and the sewage city in an attempt to get Sylvanas as justice for Teldrassil. The schism was later into BfA for the Battle for Darkshore when Anduin was concerned the Alliance forces were already spread too thin trying to deal with the inexplicably “We didn’t just suffer a civil war and other tremendous losses” still a global superpower Horde and its infinite numbers.
Of course that ended up not being the case because then the Alliance immediately won the Battle for Dazar’alor, held Stromgarde, and retook Darkshore apparently all within the same week. But tHeY’lL bE cAlLiNg Up ThE fArMeRs SoOn.
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I was a personal fan of how they hammered home all the story beats that happened off-screen in, like, the last ten minutes of the expac.
“Greetings, Calia Menethil. I should think that you, the former heir of Lordaeron who was then murdered by Sylvanas in Arathi and then raised to a new form of unlife, would want to lead the Forsaken after what happened in Arathi.”
“Yes, thank you, Anduin. I, Calia Menethil, was there when the Desolate Council was murdered in Arathi and I do not blame anyone for what happened when I was also murdered by Sylvanas in Arathi.”
“Arathi was a very important locale that happened in this story. It’s good that we made sure to mention it.”
“Yes, people who say this is confusing are wrong. Also, it is wrong to make fun of people with edgy facial hair who wear trenchcoats and fire bows and say things like ‘my love.’”
“I agree, Calia Menethil. And so does the Light.”
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thats what i was referring to, i remember reading the alliance pushed into arathi specifically to reinforce their position in lordaeron and eventually push into quel’thalas with the horde going in for the opposite reason
while the mission table missions are ‘canon’ theyre also a god damned mess lmfao dont hordies have one where they specifically targetted someone aiding night elf refugees and getting them to the safety of azuremyst? that sure does take on a new meaning after 8.1, huh!
strong enough to take on saurfangs rebellion, the entire alliance, AND be the only hope against the last old god! but whos counting?
ill raise you mueh’zalas infodump in the other side
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The more I think about BFA, the more I’m just sort of done arguing with individual players about the factions. Like, I’m still gonna roll my eyes when people thump their chests about dumb stuff but ultimately the Alliance is always one bad battle away from having to forcibly conscript their civilian population and become a bleak Imperium allegory, and the thrice-culled, resource starved Horde is perpetually a global threat no matter how many times they eat sand.
I’m just kind of over it. 99% of what anyone says will just end up being headcanon by virtue of Blizzard’s inability to balance their own story beats so they can live in the comfort of their own fanfic space.
I don’t usually say “this” but Jesus, THIS. That really hammered home how not-in-plain-sight the totally in plain sight motiviations of the Jailer and Sylvanas this whooooooooooooooooooole time really was. The fact Mueh’zala existed for approximately five minutes in one tablet, one reference in the young adult Travelers series (which was then immediately dropped) doesn’t help either for what is supposed to be this prominent Over-Loa figure.
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I’ll forgive Mueh’zala since I like Bwonsamdi content, I really like the dungeon and the fight and I think he’s at least succinct about it.
Mueh’zala was sort of neat and I wish he had featured in the Ardenweald main questing experience because that could have been more interesting than just “become Ysera’s mom”
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It’s snowglobe storytelling. The setting and circumstances gets completely rewritten whenever they need it.
We just beat the Legion together, making a deliberate point of putting aside our differences for the final and most crucial time? Shake the snowglobe, now we’re at war.
The war’s unpopular now? Shake the snowglobe, now it’s about Old Gods.
Nothing is permanent, there are no consequences and the characters contradict themselves in the same sentences sometimes. So why bother listening to the parts you don’t like? Not like it’ll matter.
It’s kind of like a dancing bear. You don’t really notice when it stumbles, because it’s a bear. You just sort of applaud when it gets it right.
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thats probably wise, it feels like theres a dissonance between the ground level devs attempting some level of realism and investment in the stories theyre made to tell and the bombast ion and danuser demand at the forefront of the narrative
how funny would it be if when we finally fight the jailer he just straight up doesnt know who mueh’zala is and all that was like, mueh’zala’s audition?
I mean, if we’re being realistic here. The only ones resource starved are the Orcs (cant really count forsaken since they’re basically in a million pieces atm and not really able to be relevant).
Though the whole “We’ll call up the farmer soon…” line just made me go “Ummmm… no.” Last I checked Kul Tiras is a functioning society and the presence of cities leads me to believe it has a stable enough population that they can help make up the differences.
The only ones I find the ‘infinite numbers’ thing to be unrealistic for is honestly the orcs since THATS NOT HOW WORLD BUILDING AND DESERTS WORK! YOU ALREADY IGNORED RULE ONE BY NOT PUTTING THE CITY BY A RIVER!
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I agree with the rest of your point but there is a river directly next to Orgrimmar.
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Ah, my bad, I genuinely forgot that river existed since it’s not actually in the city.
To add to this.
With the ordeal of Zandalar posing a threat this can at least be bought. We’ve seen Zandalari in two previous expansions instigate stuff (even if BfA retconned that to being mostly Zul and him needing to rely on the lesser tribes for most the boots on the ground) and the fact that the Kul Tirans do genuinely opt for a sneak attack of the degree BoDA was over something else speaks volumes. For as much as people gripe about technology, they also tend to forget that the presence of magic yeets that single way forward out a window.
Forsaken at least you can say they raise the dead, so there was that. Belves are at least shown suplimenting their ground forces with things like golems, arcane creations and other such things, so the idea of them punching above their weight is legit (Can also apply this to Night Elves but cycle out golems and arcane for druidic themed things to match them)
Orcs? Functionally they should’ve ended up being much less imposing following MoP unless we legitimately evacuated the entire population of Draenor.
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when you’re giving birth to ysera depending on your faction shandris is either giving you an approving nod for alliance or a disapproving scowl for horde on whether or not you’ll be a good mother
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Oh and only three of these massive changes in territory are even reflected in game (all changes that took away RP space though admittedly Silithus was visited once a year at most) so even if you wanted to try to keep up in RP you’d have to explain this to any who aren’t completely up to date with the latest bullsh*t. I don’t do it anymore. I don’t care.
Shandris can also cease since my Zanda is 1 gripe away from saving the Kaldorei souls but leaving important lore characters in the Maw.
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you’d be doing Azeroth a service by leaving important lore characters in the maw
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I’ll bake you a cake.
The vast majority of the orcs in the Horde came to Kalimdor in a small handful of stolen ships. Everything about infrastructure aside, from day one they shouldn’t have had the numbers to make a powerful, functioning army.
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