Basically I’m suggesting this;
But we are obliged and encouraged to root for the monstrosities.
Maybe that doesn’t sound fun for you. But I am talking about the Northern EK. Which I maintain should be Spookslyvania.
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“I’m all for nuance, but we don’t need to invite the idea they could have any good ideas and I think they should be punching bags and dog meat.”
“This isn’t to humanize the Scarlets, but to terrify you into considering how easily you could become a subhuman like them. That is, someone who sympathizes with fascist and/or German rhetoric and/or accents.”
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100%. Precisely.
I’ve repeatedly equated them to N@ZIs and said they should be portrayed as such. To whom am I being unfair?
I would ask politely once for you not to equate my heritage with the lunacy that nearly eradicated my bloodline and sent my tempest tossed grandparents across the Atlantic.
Approximately one Scarlet has a German accent. You’ll have to elaborate.
I RP my character with a German accent precisely because I’m exasperated by this sterotype. Imagine inventing modern philosophy and cinema but everybody’s gotta glob on to the Austrian arthouse dropout who screwed his cousin and constantly ished his pants.
They did it with Deathwing during Cataclysm - randomly toasting the countryside. I have scars.
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Yeah but to have an actually engaging aerial avoidance/dogfight system.
They have that lava giant ranked debuff targeting system which I at least saw for the first time in Mechagon.
But I doubt anything is going to top PvP on that note. Fun fact dragons are so fast they struggle to keep on target with Goblin gliders. Pro tip go skyward and force your drake into a slow descending glide.
Be neat if they made a dragon chase you but I figure the way to outfox it would be common meta knowledge by week two if that.
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You’re basically being unfair to anyone who actually cares about the Scarlet Crusade more than your need for political caricature.
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Elaborately my point is not to equate, but just the opposite - to point out how superficial and flimsy the “Scarlet=Adolf’s Finest” parallel is. Even MoP’s crackpot history-burning Scarlets who have the accent are so few that you downplay the number to one, so you obviously don’t think that alone represents the faction’s 20 years of aesthetics and ideologies.
I think you simultaneously gave an angle that could make the Scarlet Crusade nuanced again AND explained why they don’t work as is.
The Scarlet Crusade could be sympathetic for the same reason some consider the Imperium of Man such. In 40k, as horrible as the Imperium is, it is presented as the less bad alternative to Chaos, Tyranids or being Dark Eldar cattle. Plus, there’s sympathetic members of the Imperium even if the Imperium itself is a hodge-podge of the most brutal civilizations in human history. Given a choice between serving the Scarlet Crusade and the Burning Legion, the Old Gods or the Jailer…
And yet you also touched on the problem. There is a sort of doublethink with some WoW fans claiming the Scarlet Crusade off-shoots are nuanced while at the same time treating them like punching bags. And the story does too, albeit much more of the latter than the former. It makes them increasingly unsympathetic as a group and any sympathetic members are those who either leave or are about to. Plus, every time we see them appear they’re treated as punching bags; even in Legion their only purpose is to be punching bags - for Death Knights, the Argent Crusade and more, culminating in the purge of the Scarlet Crusade itself.
And I don’t see any N@zi parallels beyond racial supremacy; the Scarlet Crusade and their off-shoots were never into eugenics, never had concentration camps to kill undesirables, weren’t/aren’t expansionist (the closest we got was the Scarlet Brotherhood, but they went to Northrend to fight the Scourge and to escape the perceived destruction of the Scarlet Crusade, not conquer Northrend in the name of the Light) and while the N@zis used religion when it suited them they were a non-theocratic political party, not a religious group (eg; Hitler clashed with the church on education in Germany when even Mussolini - an avowed anti-religious atheist - let the church handle education in Italy).
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Even the racial supremacy is mainly a degeneration from outdated Second War era ideology to demonic brainwashing.
The Imperium of Man is sympathetic because it’s a ‘best choice amongst terrible options’. The Scarlet Crusade has never been that.
You choose the Alliance, the actual good guys basically led by a saint.
The Scarlet Crusade has never been anything more then a villain faction in every incarnation, so I don’t see why using them as a player punching bag is such a bad thing.
EDIT:
Scarlet Onslaught, Brotherhood is the new one.
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For those who live in the Northlands, I would say the Crusade was exactly that for awhile. That 5 year period between WC3 and Vanilla WoW, the Scarlet Crusade was the only living faction in the Northlands getting anything done.
They were gaining ground in this time, holding large areas of the Plaguelands, with many strongholds scattered throughout. They even attempted a campaign in Northrend really before anyone else. It failed, but the fact it managed to reach the mouth of Icecrown Glacier is significant.
This is only true in the context of WoW. Before that, they were very much the Good Guys. A more militaristic incarnation of the Argent Dawn. The problem with the Crusade has never been their motivations or goals, and arguably, they themselves have never been villains, but rather victims.
Their leader possessed by a Dreadlord, who then started leading them down the path of paranoia and fanaticism. It is not likely that any of these people were of sound mind to begin with. The Trauma of the Scourge, and fighting that kind of war, is a level of Hell that I don’t think we can fully comprehend. Add in the manipulations of one bad actor, who is a literal demon, its no surprised the Crusade ended up the way they were.
I am hesitant to say the Peasant who lost everything to the Scourge, developed crippling PTSD among other things from witnessing his entire family being either ripped apart or turned into monsters trying to kill him, while the very ground at his feet grows sickly and blighted. Who joined up with the only organization who seemed to be changing things for the better. And who his mental state meticulously and maliciously exploited by a literal demon who’s very nature is manipulation. Can be written off as just a villain who has always been that way.
A tragic villain perhaps. But the thing is about tragic villains is they -are- sympathetic-. And that’s why the Scarlet Crusade is too.
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That 5 year period has very little lore that actually came to mean anything in the game’s history. And the only time it came to matter was to add another Dreadlord to control them.
It’s not like it even particularly matters at this point because the Scarlet Brotherhood is not the Scarlet Crusade, it is essentially an entirely new organization taking up a mantle.
Unless said peasant suddenly gets a name and a story arc I don’t see how this makes using them as a villain faction a bad thing. Might as well just expand that to every other designated quest enemy, stop fighting murlocs, gnolls, kobolds, etc because they might have sympathetic npc’s who just don’t have actual stories in the game.
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… I mean, if you honestly believe backstory doesn’t contribute anything to the current story, then I can’t help you.
The implication you made was they were never sympathetic, which is just not true at all.
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According to the original telling of the story, a lot of this five year period was when the Scarlet Crusade was led by the Scarlet Highlord and Ashbringer, Alexandros Mograine. It also had its own Ranger Captain and High Wizard, so there was a legitimately a time you were better off there than with Garithos (the locally remaining Alliance leadership) as an elf.
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Oh God. Thanks for letting me know. I mean to be cruel and dismissive towards them. Unfair is way too soft. Spare me your virtue signaling.
The Imperium of Man is only sympathetic because they have actual nuance, because they live in the setting that LITERALLY COINED THE TERM GRIMDARK.
The Scarlets are the least deserving of nuance. Because they have a perfect counterpoint in the Argents. Who represent everything they aim to do but done with compassion, intelligence and cunning.
The Scarlets are backwards idiots. They don’t even have the ‘noble goals falling to the wayside’ angle the Defias or Amani do because those groups don’t have a good guy version down the street you can join.
The Scarlets are deserving of precisely the same mercy and consideration they’d show their enemies.
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Seriously though on the 40k note, why don’t we want a villainous faction this absurd kicking around;
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Sure, torture Vishas as he tortured Vorrel. I’m not here to castigate anyone who did that, or even anyone who slaughtered the former’s entire family in vengeance. But why be self-admittedly “cruel and dismissive” to people (not WoW characters) who like the Scarlet Crusade, or who care about the fact it was literally the faction of Alexandros before it was the tool of Balnazzar? Because they should feel obligated to find the boring asss Argent Crusade more interesting? Meanwhile not even the more militant subsect that Leonid openly worried about in Cata should ever change like Alexandros’ order did, seven years out from Tirion’s horrible death?
Being the first to say “virtue signaling” in this thread doesn’t change that you’ve been talking about politics more than lore.
I was saying a hypothetical scenario where they could be nuanced, like they were in Vanilla. Now there is no sensible reason to join the Scarlet Onslaught or the Scarlet Brotherhood… which is what I’m trying to point out to people who say they want them back because they were nuanced.
Thanks for pointing out the typo; I said Scarlet Brotherhood by mistake.
I mean, I literally explained a few posts above this why this isn’t the case. It’s really not a complicated matter -why- the Scarlet Crusade would be a sympathetic villain, more tragic than anything else. Tbh, this sounds more like a personal matter to you.
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