That’s how Blizzard operates. It’s basically how they’ve always operated. The leader of a faction/people acts as a representative of what that group is all about. That’s what my entire post was about.
Nope, you missed the point. Baine isn’t a real person. He doesn’t have autonomy or an actual personality of his own. He is a character in a story and serves as a vehicle for Tauren ideals in said story. Baine acts the way he does because that’s how Blizzard wants the Tauren to be seen in the narrative. That’s why it doesn’t matter if the Tauren get a new leader. They’ll still act mostly the same.
You can see a blatant example of this with Moira and the Dwarves. The moment Moira became part of the mainstream Dwarven leadership, her darker tendencies and authoritarian methods vanished. She went from seizing control of Ironforge and declaring martial law to being a model Dwarven NPC overnight. You can see a little bit of her old hard edges in short stories and novels, but that side of her is non-existent in game.
I love Lasan. He’s a step in the right direction, but he mostly acts as a taxi to take the player where we need to go. You never actually see him fight anything. What I’m talking about would be like the Tauren starting experience in Mulgore where the capstone has Baine crushing a rebel Grimtotem. We need more of that to remind people that Tauren are eight foot tall juggernauts and not just puppies to be used for the Worf Effect.
That’s pretty funny because that’s what Baine defenders here are doing to defend his nonsensical actions which lead to more Tauren deaths.
Bringing this up again as your only point is dishonest. You try to avoid everyone and everything here with your two lines. Even though this stupid idea was only used from one player and most other said, we don’t think that’s good.
I seriously doubt them Tauren will start to send their body parts as tokens for the self inserts of Christie Golden en masse… and Baine still ISN´T a character. Not when his goals and personality can be resumed as: “Anduin´s ones”.
He´s just a plot device, not even a character. Characters have nuance and certain sort of “independence” thanks to they way they´re created; so far Baine basically CAN´T go out of his “muh 1000% Anduin/Jaina/insert Golden´s self insert oriented plot”.
Imagine a glorified player Taxi driver having MORE personality and goals than the supposed “core” Tauren example a.k.a. Baine. Ty for proving my point.
And Lor´themat in 5.2 HAD personality, and goals, and secrets. His latest incoming cameo have him making an 180 in regards to Jaina (I mean, he went from “If I have to strab you woman to protect my people I´ll do it” to “OMG but Tyrande seems stronger than Goddess Jaina who can beat AnYtHiNg!!!”) and has him basically fangirling the sister of the man responsible for the death of 90% of his people and the misery of the survivors by default. Disgusting.
Man, if those defenders at least had the pants to admit they like him cause his existence and the way he is used as a proper plot device is extremely GOOD to propel the Alliance ego and the image the faction is made of 100% certified lawful good bois/gals who can doi no wrong ever…
No, as I said it’s not a one way street. That goes for “both sides”.
Of course if there are large differences it’s something to perhaps look at. If mostly people of the other faction like one character…there is something wrong.
Look dear, personally I criticize Alliance characters only when they impact my gameplay; which unfortunately for ME kinda happens quite often (you think I wanted to deal with Shaw´s incompetence in Legion and save him as if I cared as a Horde rogue main? Or fight side by side and defend Jaina while a Sunreaver victim got the villain bat in the “save the furry damsel in distress plot device so Anduin and Jaina look good” scenario? Or get Anduin making the most ridiculous, pointless and airheaded discourse in Orgrimmar? (no seriously it´s quite an stupid discourse, specially from an Alliance PoV)
I can´t talk about the rest of the posters, but believe me, I only make an opinion over Alliance characters THANKS to how those are used DETRIMENTALLY for my gameplay. I literally ignore the ones that don´t affect my gameplay, cause guess what? as someone who don´t play Alliance, I don´t see the point in messing up with stuff that´s not my problem.
Baine is no “Horde” character, cause he indeed negatively impacts the Alliance player enjoyment of the story too… but that´s to be expected pf a plot device designed around self inserts that pollute EVERYTHING they can in the narrative as if they were irl cancer or something.
Unless they’re a Grimtotem or Feltotem, tauren generally don’t stay angry about anything for long. Taurajo is often the go-to example of Alliance mis-behavior but in truth, tauren as a whole don’t seem to be mad about it anymore.
There´s a difference between nursing a grudge for the ages and literally letting third parties use one as a doormat 24/7.
Baine (and by default the “modern” Tauren) typically is representative of the second thing (and no, not even Cairne was A-Ok with people messing up stuff for the lols, his reaction to the Garrosh issue is proof enough. He DID fight to defend his ideals… Baine? ROFL… hides and let´s other people play the price until he gets caught).
See, I don’t see it as “one Character.” I like the over-all total story, all characters included because, frankly, when you get down to individual characters, They’re all sh!t. To me, as someone who DOES play Horde, Blaine improves the overall story and I actually really like him for what he brings to the story, even despite his flaws.
Of course, BfA was bad in so many ways and he really got shafted as much as anyone but he and Saurfang improved my experience despite how bad the expansion was. Not as good as he COULD of been but still.
And this is called “Projecting,” something you’ve clearly become quite good at. In fact, it’s the only way you know how to argue.
And here you are, claiming to speak for Alliance Player or know how Alliance players feel, despite claiming you don’t even play Alliance or care about their story.
Whew boy.
Quite the thread. So I’mm run off here and ya’ll can reply or ignore me.
I do think Baine as a character is overall detrimental to the Tauren as much as Anduin is detrimental to Stormwindian humans (and to the alliance as a whole). These character’s semi-perfection need to get toned the heck down, it’s apart of overall trend of writing characters a very specific way.
Though these can easily be tweaked to help alleviate the problems with both of these issues, the problem is Anduin seems to be leaning to this but Baine doesn’t seem to be getting the same treatment. I feel a greater part for the Tauren would be just to introduce more Tauren characters that are important and play off other characters more, as it seems unlikely to me they’ll ever fix Baine. The next best thing would just be to add more overall perspective to how they see things instead being becoming a tunnel vision between “Good tauren” and “bad tauren”.
Baine is the Anduin of the Horde. They are simply the writer(Golden) telling us we need to agree with every decision these two make as they are always right and any opinions outside of this are wrong.
They aren’t characters as much as the writers trying to telling us what to think and feel about the situation these characters find themselves in. They don’t react to events like a normal person would in their situation.
This is why people hate them as they just a political and morale agenda pushed on players.
Yeaah…wanting a meaningless, senseless war that’s killing a ton of people on both sides to end…oh the horror, oh…how dare he?
Also his ''betrayal" was against a genocidal mad warchief that was quite literaly killing people for the sake of killing people to appease her otherworldly boss.
Like if someday down the line Anduin starts to do what Sylvanas did, “betraying” him would be a moral duty not a dishonor.
It’s like putting in real world terms, scolding someone for betraying Hittler or any other dictator.