On the topic of “Oh poison gas is so evil IRL, so much worse than everything else!” when it comes to the Blight, what I actually ended up thinking of was real-life flamethrowers and how they essentially have an analogue now in all of the weapons that spew Azerite flames at enemies. Specifically the one boss in Motherlode that shoots a sort of napalm-like burning substance at you, or how the Alliance gets a quest to burn goblins to death.
If you stop and think about it, being burned to death by something like napalm, or the magma of a fire elemental, is an absolutely horrific way to die, and yet it gets none of the ominous signaling that the Blight does. In short, Blizzard is extremely inconsistent with what they pick to be “horrible” and what’s just another day in the life of Azeroth, where dozens of terrible deaths await the powerless.
legality of weapons at least in real life is more about the scope its what Chemcial weapons where outlawed instantly after ww1 and flamethowers where not, cause chemical weapons can kill and did kills thousands of people on the use of them.
Undead along with their sickly green miasma and death magic being a fundamental evil is just more narrative shorthand baked into the fantasy genre. Just like spellcasters blasting people with ice/fire/lightning and thieves stabbing people in the back before/after picking their pockets being treated as relatable and even heroic protagonists.
Blizzard doesn’t invent these tropes stuff so much as it plays some of it straight while calling attention to and/or subverting others. It is a fantasy setting, after all.
Maybe we shouldn’t use giant wild spiders as the standard for sentient race ethics?
I mean, I wouldn’t expect other people to treat me the same way a giant insect would. Not even my enemies, and specially not my allies (looking at you Siege of Lordaeron)
Sounds like a good reason to disregard your idea then.
Given the Bilgewater can pop open Town-In-A-Boxes, they can settle anywhere. However the best place for them might be in the Underhold now that Sylvanas isn’t using it any more.
My point was Azeroth functions on a different metric than ours. Presumably most pyro mages leave a pile of charred bones and ash in every single quest outing.
Blight being portrayed as somehow more horrifying in this world is kinda silly when you get right down to it. I think only warriors and hunters would be considered acceptable under the Geneva Convention. And even then probably not as there seems to be a lot of abilities designed to cause cruel and unusual pain.
I mean sure sure Forsaken can keep using the blight, but then they will never be seen as anything but bad guys. The Alliance won’t ever have to feel morally dubious about wiping them out to the last.
Issue lies in that the narrative have painted the use of the blight as evil in every instance of it being used. If they forsaken wish to keep using it then they are basically Villian batting themselves thus justifying them getting driven away from any alliance settlement.
Its just like the Sun Reavers, they keep betraying and assisting Maniacs in wars of genocide. It may not be all of them but every time one of the does another betrayal it turns more and more against the whole of the race.
Given the NEs can literally pop full grown forests out of nowhere and the entirety of Azeroth is by technicality their ancestral land, why should I care in the slightest about the NEs getting that lovely little power trip of being allowed to hold a territory right in the main Horde capital’s backyard? And … tbh … it isnt really manifest destiny when the main portion of Azshara the Goblins inhabited is what appears to be an area of Azshara that the NEs simply kept around as a status symbol for how they successfully nearly ended the entire Highborne civilization; and gladly, nearly managed a successful cultural genocide against that group to boot.
But “Oh no! The NE’s got rid of their Arcane-Elf execution order like 10 years ago, and are being led around by the woman who attempted to slaughter the entire Shen’dralar population … even after they had been “humbled enough” to rejoin. Only 10k years to change that? So progressive! Malf also didn’t “want to” execute to the Highborne survivors of the Sundering, so he was satisfied just letting them wander aimlessly into an unknown world without any guarantee they’d survive.” Cuz … those were the only options. Put immense pressure to join your nature cult, die, or leave into the unknown. Yeah … the NBs totally should have joined these people over the BEs.
But the difference is in how it is used and by who.
The forsakens are evil and makes evil stuff, so that makes their weapons evil.
The alliance in the other hand has different goals, such as, not trying to wiping out life or trying to make azeroth bleed to death to weaponize her blood.
The horde, as the evil faction is portrayed as evil monsters who deserves to die. so is clear to see why the blight is portrayed as wrong, when you use it just to simply destroy without much of a reason other than just do it.
That is why even we using a damn lava elemental to burn goblins to death feels more justified considering that they were part of a genocidal campaign to exterminate all life.
The fact that Blizz keeps framing the Blight as this unique evil - when it is objectively not much more wicked than almost any given classes spells and abilities - kinda highlights how that’s probably just going to be the case regardless of what happens.
The Forsaken, by design, are a darker faction. Their racial involves eating the dead for sustenance. Abominations, giant bats, giant spiders, dark hounds and skeletal horses with horns supplement their forces. This is not a faction that is going to look sympathetic easily.
Now I think a bygone Blizz - the writers who took Tolkein esque Orcs and gave them pathos- could probably do some real cool stuff with the Forsaken and humanize them. There’s a lot of smaller character moments in quests that do this. But by design the Forsaken are going to be a grimer shade of morally gray on their best day, and we’ve seen how utterly inept Blizz is at handling ‘morally gray’.
That you think Forsakens are bad guys or not, or the Alliance thinks such, there’s no way you can justify and advocate “genocide” and picture it as something good.
I won’t reach out to show how flimsy the logic is. But being unable to see further than “Forsakens ebil lulz”, I almost got the temptation to og “Opinion disregarded”.
i mean, why? they clearly love blighting,torturing and killing stuff.
The only “good” forsaken was kinda zelling, and he is was killed for it.
so why do you deny the identity of your race?.
Because you just revealed you’ve never played Forsaken quests, or bothered reading the logs at least, if Zelling’s all you have.
Master Apothecary Lydon along with the PC and Johnny Awesome stop a mad man from releasing a strain of the plague that would wipe off all life from Azeroth. Calder Gray uses his abominations to help save Mount Hyjal. Also the numerous undead in every applicable Order Hall. Ted Shoemaker, Meryl Felstorm, Alonsos Faol, Dark Ranger Velonara, Lilian Voss et cetera.
i guess that my problem would be that they are too much related to what sylvanas do as the forsakens as a whole.
Sylvanas cannot do her stuff on her own.
that is where the forsakens enter doing all sorts of evil stuff for little to no reason.
Voss, for example let not only that they violate the free will of one guy, but also torture him to turn him into a weapon vs the proudmoores.
Basically, exactly how the scourge treated them, as weapons.
She did nothing to save him.
So where are the forsakens being “good”?.
In brennadan for example i can see one forsaken literally torturing a innocent girl just for fun, she wasn’t even a soldier or anything.
So is easy to see that everyone are just as the same when they only show up to do evil stuff.
Hell even belmont is portrayed as a maniac.
Yeah they’re all irredeemable for not immediately openly defying Windrunner. A personally deadly despot with countless loyal assassins who has demonstrated that she will murder even those who are accidentally disloyal to her.
Only evil people can be intimidated into inaction I guess. Lilian Voss confesses she’s ashamed of her inaction and shows visible disgust at it.