I am.
/10char
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I know people don’t like Calia, but can we not have the Forsaken led by some kind of council within a council instead of just picking someone?
Honestly, a good number of us do in fact also like Calia. We are just exhausted of being beaten over the head over it. Calia is valid, and the fans have been asking for her for years. Blizzard did a sloppy job introducing her, but it is what it is. Calia is still perfectly valid as an option, and of all the possible leaders she is the more compassionate to the Forsaken and sees them for who they are.
This thread is a powerful testimony to the staggering mental gymnastics people will do to break forsaken lore rather than look at Calia as a legit faction leader for the Forsaken.
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Her claim is to Lordaeron, a dead kingdom and her claim died with it. The Forsaken are a different people made up of different undead races. She has only recently experienced this new culture and way of life as she fled decades ago. She will be the Forsaken leader of course, it won’t make any sense other than, “my family used to rule this place”.
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I think you’re the first Forsaken player I’ve ever seen demanding Calia as a leader. Calia has absolutely no legitimacy in this role and although she most definitely was planned to end up leading them, everybody has since pointed out how disconnected she is with the theme, identity, history, mentality and even condition (both biological and psychological, due to her being Lightforged) of the Forsaken. She can join the Forsaken and humbly live among them and get to learn about them, share their pain and difficulties. She can do that, that’s completely fine. She can’t lead them.
Also, biological warfare is at the heart of Forsaken aesthetics and identity, so it should remain. That includes blight but also things like Scourge-related experiments and the crafting of Abominations. They should retain their taste for that stuff but try to reach some sort of balance between being untrustworthy psychos everybody in the Horde despises and peacemongering Calia followers
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Had Calia actually been Forsaken she would have been the clear choice. Golden holy light zombie lady who is besties with the High King of the Alliance? No. Get that right the hell out of here. It’s not mental gymnastics to point out that dropping Calia at the head of the Forsaken is about as tonally consistent as a dropping a Valley Girl at the head of Hells Angels.
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The amount of likes this comment deserves is far more than the paltry one I can give.
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The big picture on Calia is a poor handling of her story on Blizzards part, which stems from them over-fixating on writing Forsaken lore centered around when Sylvanas wanted something. The Forsaken as a whole deserve to be layered, and more complex beyond being used for when when a Horde baddie is needed to throw blight. The Forsaken are a faction of undead, who were once living humans, and their founding and start was in the fall of Lordaeron. Many of these original Forsaken are victims, who became undead through simply being exposed to the wrong grain shipment or loaf of bread.
“For Lordaeron” is still a chant that rings true in the game…and it doesn’t belong just to living human Paladins who play on the Alliance.
Ample Forsaken recall who they were and a time before the Scourging.
Calia has been asked for, for many years by the fan base. Alas, the hyper fixation on Sylvanas as the primary point of Forsaken storytelling means they overlooked many other aspects of the Forsaken. We have a handful of Forsaken who are Lordaeron nobles and more in the game.
Sylvanas was little more than a cruel authoritarian dictator who openly regarded her people as disposable weapons. Need we recall the quote that she regarded them as arrows in her quiver. Speaking as someone who enjoys archery; arrows are disposable weapons. You never fire an arrow you intend to get back.
Calia’s death and rebirth into what she is now is…a failure on Blizzards part. That said, in the Before The Storms book Calia’s compassion for the Forsaken as her people were laid bare, and it was her compassion for the Forsaken that got her murdered by Sylvanas.
Calia presents something interesting for the Forsaken that the Dark Lady could never offer. Calia’s claim to the crown allows for her to be politically weaponized against the Alliance of Stormwind claiming Lordaeron, and wiping the Forsaken off of it. Calia also brings with her political connections.
As for Calia losing her claim to the throne of Lordaeron when she died? This is a world of magic, with the undead having existed in it for thousands of years. After all, Sylvanas was called the Banshee Queen, yet had no rightful claim to any such title.
Tragically, writing for Calia in the game however has shown her to be soft, and devoid of additional depth to make her a more compelling character. I highly suspect stuff was planned and written for her in Shadowlands, and it was dropped…much like many other things when Shadowlands was cut short due to how unpopular it is.
The Forsaken story needs to grow beyond being a fan service for Sylvanas. I and many others welcome Calia as a new chapter. By no means do I think Calia will make the Forsaken weak and soft, I think it marks a new more dangerous era of Forsaken political games that will lean into their better sense of canny, making them effective political tools against the Alliance for the Horde.
That said, I like both Calia and Sylvanas. I am equally big fans of both, and yet see them for being very different characters and leader styles.
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The “old guard” of Forsaken players loved the idea. The whole “we zombies are the true heirs of Lordaeron” shtick was the highest item on the Forsaken agenda a couple of forum rollbacks ago, and the prospect of an undead Calia Menethil championing their rights was ambrosia. She was the only potential replacement for Sylvanas they were willing to entertain; they lost their minds when that very story hook made it to the writing contest finals in 2011. The thought made human male paladin types quake in their boots.
Of course, I doubt those fans quite imagined their undead princess coming back to them as this ridiculous light golem. Trust Blizzard to take a solid concept and execute it in the worst, most unpalatable way imaginable.
Edit: Banshih beat me to it.
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Legitimacy is not the issue, suitability is.
You talk about unfamiliarity with the Forsaken condition, but it seems like Calia understands them better than most players do. It’s pretty much established that being undead is painful and miserable. Calia is one of the only characters who seeks to actually DO something to fix that, instead of just teaching them to live with their misery.
She actually possesses the ability to ease their suffering, and, realistically, the Forsaken would want that for themselves, and love her for giving it to them.
Unfortunately, that’s not what the Forsaken PLAYERS, who specifically picked their character so they could play a tortured goth, want for their characters.
But the PCs are not the majority of the Forsaken people. What the Forsaken people would want for themselves isn’t what the Forsaken players want.
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I don’t think there is much of an old guard versus new guard mentality so much as those who know a lot of the lore and those who are not yet indepth. In the end we are all the same community, and that kind of mentality is really toxic. Everyone should be welcome to play regardless of being old or new.
This boils down to lore.
That said, the way they made Calia undead is…odd. Calia’s claim to the throne is a powerful political weapon for the Forsaken to use to become even more dangerous. That said, we can’t change what Blizzard writes.
In the end - many of us who understand and follow the Forsken lore new and old look at this as a new change of pace and have hope that we can see the Forsaken story written with more depth beyond being Sylvanas fan service.
Again, I like Sylvanas…but…I’m tired of the Forsaken story existing only to make her important.
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One of the things that is unique about Calia and the Forsaken is…
Calia openly sees the Forsaken for who they were, and what they have become.
The Forsaken are very much still humans. The book Before The Storm made it very clear that the Forsaken as a whole ache for acceptance, and to find a place in the world.
If you have not yet read the book Before The Storm, do so. Its very eye opening.
I’ll admit, the scene that happened at Arathi when Sylvanas started openly murdering Forsaken in front of the Alliance (including Forsaken loyal to Sylvanas mind you), I teared up reading it. The scene with the undead brothers trying to protect their elderly mother, only for the elderly mother to watch her undead sons be murdered by the Dark Rangers? Heart breaking.
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I’m moving this to it’s own thread: A look at the future of the Forsaken - Support For Calia ♕
This convo will interest many people, but I hate for it to be buried.
Yeah that’s really not where I was going with that. It’s just interesting how a wish made ten years ago is starting to come true, but in a form no one is comfortable with. There were a thousand ways to do a compelling undead-Calia arc and they zombified her in a way so stupid and polarizing it boggles the mind.
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Thank you for clarifying, I misunderstood.
That said, I jumped this to a new thread since this topic deserves its own dedicated space: A look at the future of the Forsaken - Support For Calia ♕
I absolutely don’t disagree with that though. I know Forsaken players were looking forward to meeting Calia Menethil and I’m genuinely sad that they were let down so hard. The problem is that the only Calia we know right now is a complete disaster of a character, Before the Storm introduced her as literally a female Anduin, sharing the exact same values, the exact same flaws (thoughtlessness, naivety etc) and giving off the exact same vibes. I think we all agree that the Forsaken must evolve, especially now that Sylvanas is gone, but that evolution needs some consistency… The Forsaken just can’t go from having the worship of a genocidal, universe-threatening Dark Lady as their core identity to being led by a Light-infused golden savior who remained dead for exactly 5 minutes after she tried to bring them into the Alliance on the first occasion. What she embodies as a character (currently at least) makes her incredibly unfit to the role, to me
I mean, of course Forsaken players don’t want something that is in complete contradiction with everything that has made the identity of their race for the past 20 years. I won’t blame them.
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Deathknight governors, flying Necropili mobile fortresses, reanimation guarantee from “death” for UD Forsaken, and an irreplaceable deathstalker intelligence service with Voss leading it, dark rangers on the peripheral advising only.
Ideally, put 4-8 UD Forsaken deathknights with their own contingents and armies as governing and as defensive/offensive garrisons, with mobile Necropolis forts.
An antithesis to the knights of the silver hand
The players wouldn’t want it, but their characters and the Forsaken NPCs would. Because there’s no logical reason for them to want to stay miserable when they don’t have to.
So Blizzard is stuck with the choice between:
A. Choosing what makes the most sense for the story(i.e. the Forsaken choosing someone that will actually help them), or
B. Choosing what will please the fanbase(i.e. the Forsaken choosing some edgelord that’ll keep them angsty)
Of course, Blizzard has gone route A before. When they had the Blood Elves purify the Sunwell. Storywise, something every BE would want. But it erased pretty much everything that was interesting about playing a BE character.
Utilize the deathknights.
They raise their own armies anyway
Just make the Baron/Duke/Fief DK governors able to not only reassemble the dead UD Forsaken but also attach their souls to their constructs similar to the Primus and his covenant
Then Christie Golden did her job. Grr.
The “light zombie” thing goes beyond sloppy. It’s a deal-breaker.
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