Its not so much that Garrosh was “one of the good ones” so much as, “as bad as Garrosh was, he actually seemed to have some morals than Sylvanas totally lacked.”
Personally I thought keeping the surface sparse apart from some guards served the purpose of accommodating living guests really well. I don’t entirely disagree with what Ben was suggesting about more remains of some historic battle, like Falric and Marwyn’s massacre or King Arthas’ escape, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anything still actively raging.
The worst parts of the Cata Lordaeron surface ruins were the blight tanks and purple tents, but they made some measure of sense - the people of Hillsbrad had taken over the island in the middle of the lake, and the Forsaken were warding off a potential attack from the south. I don’t think it’s necessary to pointedly pepper the area with living Horde NPCs apparently just visiting for the macabre scenery. Even the few in the Undercity are pretty much all business.
The Scarlets are dead and it better stays that way.
I have become a big Scarlet fan very recently, after my S/O and I made two Scarlets for a scandalous lesbian nun love story RP LOL
Like, the lore is actually hella cool, and I would be so down to see them again. There are all those statues of Scarlet heroes who had gone missing in various locations. It would be cool to see them return and kind of let the Scarlet Crusade have a resurgence.
1 Like
I’d prefer just a rebuilt Lordaeron. The Forsaken hanging out in a Scourge citadel makes sense as a means to an end. Obviously they’re going to use the already completed Scourge fortress.
But after the better part of two decades later, especially now that they have to rebuild Tirisfal anyway, it makes little sense to me they’d opt for that habitat. Tirisfal and most of Lordaeron is already cursed and haunted. It goes beyond mere plague infection. The Argents talk about a mystic entropy that engulfs the land. Buildings have to be constantly maintained as they wither and crumble preternaturally. It is a very strange place for the living to try to settle.
Plus the Horde in general isn’t known to be accommodating. Durotar is borderline uninhabitable for anyone not from 40k Deathworld. Silvermoon bawks at the aesthetic preferences of their allies. And even Thunderbluff is probably terrifying if you aren’t a 2 ton minotaur. Seriously imagine how much those rope wooden bridges must blow in the wind without a Tauren weighing it down.
I feel like the Scarlet Crusade today can’t capture the same vibes as it did back in Vanilla, simply because the world is so much more traversable and interconnected than it used to be.
The Crusade had a bit of a… not really sympathetic, but perhaps understandable angle to their villainy because they were so isolated in a cursed wasteland. They were omnicidal, but that was understandable when they were a living holdout backed into corners of a scourge-infested (or Forsaken-occupied, but the Scarlets didn’t see the difference) hellscape, where being trusting of strangers had a non-negligible cchance of leading to one’s death and the death of everyone else with them. They’re the classic trope of zombie apocalypse survivors who go overboard in not trusting others.
But I feel that angle has fallen apart now that the Plaguelands (and to a lesser degree, Tirisfal (at least for Alliance)) are not isolated, untamed, dangerous zones where the player has to trek through deadly wilderness to get between isolated pockets of survivors who have only a tenuous hold on the little land they could claim.
Now the regions are just another questing zone, full of safe roads and frequent faction bases, which a player can run through or fly over quickly and safely, and that takes the wind right out of the sails of the “resorting to horrible methods out of desperation and near-isolation” theme the Scarlets had going.
So I think any new Scarlet resurgence needs to carefully handle the change in circumstances and perception, or they risk being so illogical that they become comical and thus unable to carry any serious tones whatsoever. And while there can be plenty of room for comedy, this kind of conflict should be able to have serious moments, too.
4 Likes
There’s three more problems with the Scarlet Crusade’s story. They keep getting more aggressive, which has eroded the sympathy they had in-universe. The Alliance is now fully aware of the kind of people they are and their atrocities.
Second, the Argent Crusade exists, so people who want to fight for the Light don’t need to join any of the Scarlet Crusade’s offshoot groups or re-found them.
Third, the story treats them as punching bags, so how can we keep any the angle they had in Vanilla when their nuance has been gradually stripped from them and their role has been reduced to “fanatical punching bags”?
I want Scarlet RP now…
… Like a Scarlet Inquisitor with big Soviet KGB propogandist vibes. Hot Russian Communist Sparrow in a Red Uniform and peak RBF.
Just a complete evil stack of garbage of a person… but also hot.
Yes.
4 Likes
Scarlet’s=twilight cultist/incarnate cultist. Punching bags the players have dunked on repeatedly. If you want Scarlet npcs to kill, I could see a new dungeon with some quest at max but making a raid of scarlets and having them seem like a legit threat? Doubt it.
Given how blizzard does things I could sooooo see them making a max level mythic plus dungeon with a wing or two of sm.
1 Like
You will not take what the Defias can be and give it to the fascist aligned Crusade
2 Likes
Tbf I’m kinda perplexed by the threat level of everything.
I really don’t fear the Primalists. Which is weird as they launched a coordinated attack on three regions of Azeroth simultaneously, two of which were worryingly close to Orgrimmar and Ironforge.
Likewise the Black Empire was apparently a large enough threat that their defeat called for ripping off the fall of Sauron shot for shot. But far as I can tell all they did was throw some squids at obelisks and rile up a buncha bugs for a week or two so, kinda an overdramatic ending for what essentially a termite infestation.
I actually think the best thing you could do is have the enemy try to knock you out of the sky. Every threat is going to look small from a bird’s eye view. So best to drag the player down, preferably with extreme violence.
That’s actually my main issue with DF so far. Outside the Fire giant catapults your only anti air threat is other players. And suddenly having to frantically maneuver to keep from being barrel rolled out of the air is legitimately a lot of fun. I wish Razaghast would’ve turned up to try to eat us on occasion like the trailer seemed to suggest would happen. Maybe it’s just too difficult to program?
If that’s the case for the Scarlets I’d have the typical anti-air batteries. But also units not dissimilar to those worms that’ll give you a flying debuff. Presuming dragon riding becomes the norm instead of a flat speed debuff I’d have it severely reduce your energy. Figure they could be creepy little cherub esque constructs.
1 Like
Or just RP a Puritan Witchfinder General;
I think that suggestion can help with the game mechanics side and some of the player perception of the zone’s dangerousness, but it doesn’t solve things from the Scarlet Crusade’s side. (Though I do agree that this tech should have been used in a few more locations to show them as dangerous.)
Thematically, the onetime danger of the zones applied as much to the Scarlet Crusade itself as to the players - so the rank-and-file Scarlets could possibly be granted some sympathy because it wasn’t apparent that they could sneak out and leave for a saner organization because of the high chance of the environment killing them if they tried, nor could they easily meet and experience other philosophies because those other organizations couldn’t safely travel to the SC location to chat (even if the SC would let them in if they tried). That lack of safe travel and information flow can excuse crazy behavior and beliefs to some degree, depending on the audience’s predilections.
But if the only real zone danger is that generated the Scarlet Crusade itself, then that story angle doesn’t work. And it makes the SC much more one-dimensional, which works fine for a villain faction whose only purpose is to monologue and then get knocked down by the player, but less functional if the story wants to leave options open for players to sympathize with them - and if the Alliance is to have any relationship with the SC, even if it’s one or two steps removed, the SC should have some of that nuance. Though I’m not opposed to keeping the SC as a villain faction without any such Alliance relationship, comprised only of the increasingly unhinged survivors/heirs of the older SC, who show up to yell 40K-themed lines about purging the undead right before the Forsaken proceed to eat their faces. That’s fun, too, just a different style of fun.
Yeah I just don’t feel we’ve to make the supremacist theocrats terribly sympathetic.
I’m all for some nuance. Which can be delivered via ex Scarlet undead Risen for Reds and just human defectors for Blue. But as I’ve said, I think they’re basically WoW’s answer to the N@ZIs. And Gamers™ are going to Gamer™ no matter how stupid, insane and doomed they are explicitly and repeatedly shown to be. Looking at you Ceasar’s Legion and Imperium of Man. But we really, really, really don’t need to invite the idea they might have some good ideas.
I think they should mainly exist as an excuse for the Worgen and Forsaken to be able to inflict Evil Dead levels of carnage on without anyone getting bent out of shape about it. Cuz again, fantasy N@ZIs, drown them in their own piss if you want.
I’m all for more dynamic enemies but this is a fantasy action RPG. Sometimes bad guys can just be bad guys.
7 Likes
I agree - my posts are mainly in relation to the idea mentioned I-don’t-rememebr-how-much-earlier about having the Alliance be involved with the SC and/or be where recruits come from for the SC’s next resurgence. If a player faction is involved, I think there needs to be nuance, but otherwise, the SC are the perfect guilt-free player punching bags. And the latter are a very important part of a game where the player writes their character’s alignment.
1 Like
And that could be a great opportunity to really show the insidious and dangerous nature of fascism itself within this medium. If handled correctly (which is not something I would expect current Blizz to handle, though DF as shown some improvements) a resurgent SC cam use dispossessed and forgotten every day people from Stormwind, Strom, Gilneas, KT (I could imagine particularly effective and radical members coming from Drustvar), etc.
Aside from just being bad guy fodder for quests - we could really delve into how these Scarlets came to be with quite humble stories like ‘Mike was just a laborer down on his luck, then the Scarlets came promising better wages’ only to find Mike laboring for the Crusade under worse conditions. Show that Jim, who just wanted to reclaim bits of Lordearon to have a farm, turned into a sharecropper in abject poverty with the ‘promise’ of his own farm. Sara, a mage whose family lived in Ambermill wants to return Dalaran as a towering, proud, nation only to find herself reduced to a Scarlet, unable to proclaim her national identity. Billie, whose family had to flee from their home in Duskwood from non-Gilnean Worgen, go one step further, burgled by Gilnean worgen and family ran into the woods to hide from the bandits, only to be killed by the undead, became a solider to eradicate all undead and Worgen - they have no souls, the only good worgen is a dead worgen, wanting to round up all Gilneans, etc.
This isnt to humanize these Scarlets, but terrify the observer as to how easy it was to become a Scarlet. Cause these are ways actual Mustache Underlings became Mustache Underlings.
1 Like
Sorry if this is off topic but why are you red OP?
Also I think Northern Lordaeron would be a good start for the Scarlets since they are still around in Tirisfal glades and even within the highlands of the Monastery.
I appreciate the motive but I think you’ve a fundamental misunderstanding of those types;
Whatever horrors you show them will be regarded as aspirational. Like Pink Floyd’s The Wall’s Hammerskins inspired a real world hate group of the same name. The only artist I’ve seen to successfully expose fascism is Mel Brooks. And to do so he just played it straight;
Like that’s just what it is. It’s this stupid. Asinine pageantry and ferocious violence just for the sake of it.
Playing the Scarlets straight and having them argue over who to execute over the most absurd perceived heresies would be a better exposé than any emotional look at the why’s and hows.
Because bruh it’s an inherently irrational ideology. You cannot approach it with reason.
3 Likes